Has it Changed My Life? Quite Possibly.

So, Calvino's Invisible Cities is our next book.  Period.  I just finished reading it, which reading, as I've said before, was slow and savory, and I'm trying to decide: am I the same person, now that I've finished it, I was before?  Just the fact that the book's brought me to this question is saying a great deal.  Of course, to place it upon the pedestal aside the very few other truly life-changing books, I must compare it to them.  This also raises an interesting question: what is it that makes a book life-changing for its reader?  It's not a particularly difficult question, just interesting.  The answer, I think is simple: it must be a combination of [1] the book's quality (though generally to a lesser degree) and [2] the circumstances of time and place of the reader's life.  As it is, Invisible Cities is of a higher quality than some of the books way up there.  For example, as wonderful as Life of Pi is, it has its [few] limitations, one of which is word craft.  Don't get me wrong.  Martel is an excellent craftsman of the sentence, but Calvino is of the master-smithing status of Borges, Chabon, and McCarthy.  Other books include the obvious tomes of The Divine Comedy and East of Eden/Grapes of Wrath, as well as the Alice books, Ender's Game, Wonder Boys, and Blindness.  Each of these books arrived in my life at key moments, did their business, such as it was, and took up permanent residence upon my bookshelves--literal and metaphysical.  Does Invisible Cities, an essentially perfect book (yeah, really--and not perfect like Joyce, but perfect like, well, Joyce if he had a freaking heart or if Steinbeck could write briefly yet as powerfully), warrant place among the others?

Nearly all of the best books I've read, save All the Pretty Horses, which just bloody tortured me, broke me, heart and spirit, and highlighted in thirty-foot capital, fluorescent letters, "YOU CAN'T WRITE!" inspire me.  You see, I want to be a writer.  Rather, I want to be a successful writer.  I want to be a writer whose stuff people want to read!  The best books nearly always inspire me to write.  They tickle the muses who come and circle me and whisper in my ears and give my fingers and cerebral frontal lobe the itch and make me want to CREATE.  Yeah.  Well, Invisible Cities has done that--and in frickin' spades, man.  The last time I felt the bug this strongly (at least via a book) was when I finished Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North (or however you want to translate it) and subsequently began my own hyohakusha and used the genre and text as model for my creative writing students' end-of-year project.  (My hyohakusha ultimately failed (I'm an inadequate poet), though many of my students wrote and created brilliantly, beautifully.)

Basho was a three years ago.  Since reading it, I've returned to it again and again.  I've studied its poetry and form and in four or five translations.  I've traced his path on maps.  I've referred to and used him as model in poetry and a book of my own.  Has it changed my life?  I dare say it has.  Maybe it just takes time for a book to climb the long stair to the top once it's arrived at--been permitted access to--the base.  If this is the case (and you can't tell right away if it's happened), I expect Basho will soon arrive at the top right along with Steinbeck et al and Calvino will have likely just recently begun the ascent.  Time will tell, I suppose.

Regardless, this book amazed and amazes me.  I am eager to read it again.

Wednesday's for Kids XIX -- POP-UP BOOKS

Forget 3D or "Real-D" (whatever that means) movies or television, or even stereoscopes (though stereoscopes are, admittedly, really dang cool); instead go for the real thing and get a POP-UP BOOK!  Sure, they over-simplify the classic stories they attempt to retell (at least when they interpret classics like The Jungle Book or Alice in Wonderland (significantly less so, as it so happens, with The Little Prince)), but they offer engaging introductions to these stories, and whether re-tellings or original creations they are both beautiful and terribly fun.  A word of caution, however: Do not leave them with unsupervised under-fours (or so).

For parents (or anyone else):  While pop-up books are a great window to literature for children, they're also made for and targeted at adults (some favorites or mine, though not "pop-up books" per se, are the books of the Griffin and Sabine series by Nick Bantok, which are absolutely gorgeous and feature letters, envelopes, and postcards removable from their pages and so yet 3D, to a degree, nonetheless).

• The Little Prince, story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• The Castaway Pirates, by Ray Marshall
• Alice in Wonderland, story Lewis Carroll; pop-ups by Robert Sabuda
• Flying Machines, by Ib Penick
• The Jungle Book, story by Rudyard Kipling; pop-ups book by Matthew Reinhart

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana XIII -- chapter 12: BOTH THE TIME and THE PLOT POINTS, THEY "SI GIRANO"

Ming the Merciless

1. If Chabon is right (or, at least, if his ideal carries over to Eco in this case), then the story of Saint Antoninus isn't merely told to characterize the little town.  Thoughts?
2. Superstition, of course, is borne as explanation by the ignorant of an event otherwise unexplained.  Any thoughts on how that applies here with Amalia, and maybe in context of events and information shared to this point?
3. Wretched simoniacs....
4. Of course the folio is Clarabell's treasure (or a foreshadowing thereof), and appropriately so, as he found it where he wasn't looking.  But how will this, if so it does, tie into his memory?  Regardless of the imminent connection, why is Shakespeare's first folio appropriate (and not only in personal terms to Yambo)?  Of course, it's not real.  Is it?
5. "That's my book.  Is it worth it?"
6. The little bottle atop the bookcase: any connection at all to the "Drink Me" bottle of Wonderland (though not by drinking, surely, or literally so, anyway)?
7. Gordon, Ming, and the castor oil.

J.D. Salinger -- More, Please!

I had a thought.  (And what is a blogger to do with his thoughts if not write them out for the world, or his three readers, wherever they are, to see?)

So, first, by way of context:  We at The Wall have just recently finished Lewis Carroll's two Alice books, the second of which provided the opportunity to briefly examine an excised "episode," relatively recently discovered and published.  Over the weekend, I picked up my battered copy of Salinger's Seymour, and Introduction and took to enjoying it yet again.  Salinger, like Carroll, is dead.  Also like the Carroll, Salinger wrote something--a lot of somethings, if the news is to be believed--that he never published. 

The day Jerome David Salinger died, I had the same thought had by so many, and it was a greedy, unkind one.  Part of me, I'm ashamed to admit, was happy he was gone.  After all, now, finally, we might actually get the potential mountains of genius material with which he never deemed to grace the world.  The literary cannon would expand!

Maybe I was wrong. 

If I'm honest with myself, I (and I speak for me alone, though, again, if I'm being honest, I think I might even be qualified to speak for the literary world at large here, at least in this case) don't need "The Wasp in a Wig."  Don't get me wrong, I love the episode, but I think I love it more because I love Carroll and Alice; not so much for its intrinsic value (which, as it happens, is not null, but yet pales--nearly disappears! --alongside the glaring brilliance of the rest of Looking-Glass).  Is Carroll a better writer for having penned it?  Are we better scholars ("scholars") for having read it?  Does it benefit its source material?  At all?

Well ...  *sigh*  ... no, maybe-but-not-by-much, and no.

In my little collection of great writers and their great works, I've got Salinger on a pedestal similar to Carroll's.  Both have relatively little fiction available to the public (contrast this to someone like Steinbeck, who's got tons), and their ratios of near-/perfect to largely-flawed works are both impossibly high.  If I apply a friend's scale for rating literature (upon which I give Wonderland a 4.5/5 and Looking-Glass a 5/5), I would give a portion of Salinger's fiction the same: Catcher in the Rye -- 4.5/5; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters -- 4.5/5; "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" -- 5/5; "For Esme' -- with Love and Squalor" -- 5/5.

My impression of Carroll didn't change when I read "The Wasp in a Wig," and it didn't change when I finally admitted to myself that it was far, far from the more-or-less perfection of the Alice books.  Why?  Most likely because he didn't publish it!  Would the same be the case with Salinger's alleged 15 un-published novels if they ever come to light?  Would my love of Salinger and every word he's written (well, published) remain untainted?

I don't know.  Is it worth the risk?

MORE ACCIDENTAL "POETRY"

I had an extra half-hour of prep-time available today, and so thought I'd try the random poetry thing again, only this time with just one book: my The Annotated Alice, the Definitive Edition.  Using only Carroll's words, and randomly generating page, line, and word numbers from which to start my word count for each "phrase."

Here are the parameters and their results, all randomly selected by the generator at random.org:

number of phrases (10-20):               12

words per phrase (3-5):                       5

Wonderland (1&3/5); page (7-127); line (1-38); word (1-10)

Looking-Glass (2&4/5); page (133-274); line (1-38); word (1-10)

"Wasp in a Wig" (5/5); page (293-298); line (1-38); word (1-10)

	book	page	line	word	phrase
1	4: LG	175	4	5	body is a crust, and
2	2: LG	229	33	6	a fabulous monster! the Unicorn
3	4: LG	158	14	3	you! cried the Tiger-lily, waving
4	5: WW	297	29	10	Wasp went on: but the
5	1: WL	62	5	8	be listening, so she went
6	5: WW	294	28	8	spread out the paper on
7	2: LG	198	10	1	What is the matter? she said
8	4: LG	188	8	2	he ate as many as
9	3: WL	9	24	1	rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket
10	1: WL	113	27	3	at the Hatter, who turned
11	3: WL	23	3	7	the great puzzle!  And she
12	5: WW	283	23	3	only shook his shoulders, and

What are you able to come up with if we allow that these phrases be organized in any order, so long as the 5 words for each remain contiguous?

"ALICE ON THE STAGE": In His Own Words

Photograph of Alice and Dormouse;
courtesy, www.christies.com

Regarding, "Alice on the Stage," from www.christies.com (here), oft mentioned by this blog and so many other commentaries of Alice:  "A paper of six pages so entitled, in the Theatre for Apr. 1887... and criticizes Savile Clarke's dramatization of Alice. Incidentally Dodgson recounts the origin of Alice and of the Snark... The most interesting part of the article is his conception of Alice, the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Red Queen, and the White Queen, in character sketches, apart from what they said or did on the stage" (Williams-Madan-Green-Crutch 203). 

Alice on the Stage

Lewis Carroll; in The Theatre; April, 1887

'LOOK here; here's all this Judy's clothes falling to pieces again.' Such were the pensive words of Mr Thomas Codlin; and they may fitly serve as a motto for a writer who has set himself the unusual task of passing in review a set of puppets that are virtually his own--the stage embodiments of his own dream-children. 

Not that the play itself is in any sense mine. The arrangements, in dramatic form, of a story written without the slightest idea that it would be so adapted, was a task that demanded powers denied to me, but possessed in an eminent degree, so far as I can judge, by Mr Saville Clarke. I do not feel myself qualified to criticise his play, as a play; nor shall I venture on any criticism of the players as players. 

What is it, then, I have set myself to do? And what possible claim have I to be heard? My answer must be that, as the writer of the two stories thus adapted, and the originator (as I believe, for at least I have not consciously borrowed them) of the 'airy nothings' for which Mr Saville Clarke has so skilfully provided, if not a name, at least, a 'local habitation', I may without boastfulness claim to have a special knowledge of what it was I meant them to be, and so a special understanding of how far that intention has been realised. And I fancied there might be some readers of The Theatre who would be interested in sharing that knowledge and that understanding. 

Many a day had we rowed together on that quiet stream--the three little maidens and I--and many a fairy tale had been extemporised for their benefit--whether it were at times when the narrator was 'i' the vein', and fancies unsought came crowding thick upon him, or at times when the jaded Muse was goaded into action, and plodded meekly on, more because she had to say something than that she had something to say--yet none of these many tales got written down: they lived and died, like summer midges, each in its own golden afternoon until there came a day when, as it chanced, one of my little listeners petitioned that the tale might be written out for her. That was many a year ago, but I distinctly remember, now as I write, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards. And so, to please a child I loved (I don't remember any other motive), I printed in manuscript, and illustrated with my own crude designs--designs that rebelled against every law of Anatomy or Art (for I had never had a lesson in drawing)--the book which I have just had published in facsimile. In writing it out, I added many fresh ideas, which seemed to grow of themselves upon the original stock; and many more added themselves when, years afterwards, I wrote it all over again for publication: but (this may interest some readers of 'Alice' to know) every such idea and nearly every word of the dialogue, came of itself. Sometimes an idea comes at night, when I have had to get up and strike a light to note it down--sometimes when out on a lonely winter walk, when I have had to stop, and with half-frozen fingers jot down a few words which should keep the new-born idea from perishing--but whenever or however it comes, it comes of itself. I cannot set invention going like a clock, by any voluntary winding up: nor do I believe that any original writing (and what other writing is worth preserving?) was ever so produced. If you sit down, unimpassioned and uninspired, and tell yourself to write for so many hours, you will merely produce (at least I am sure I should merely produce) some of that article which fills, so far as I can judge, two-thirds of most magazines--most easy to write most weary to read--men call it 'padding', and it is to my mind one of the most detestable things in modern literature. 'Alice' and the 'Looking-Glass' are made up almost wholly of bits and scraps, single ideas which came of themselves. Poor they may have been; but at least they were the best I had to offer: and I can desire no higher praise to be written of me than the words of a Poet, written of a Poet,-- 

'He gave the people of his best:
The worst he kept, the best he gave.' 

I have wandered from my subject, I know: yet grant me another minute to relate a little incident of my own experience. I was walking on a hill-side, alone, one bright summer day, when suddenly there came into my head one line of verse--one solitary line--'For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.' I knew not what it meant, then: I know not what it means now; but I wrote it down: and, some time afterwards, the rest of the stanza occurred to me, that being its last line: and so by degrees, at odd moments during the next year or two, the rest of the poem pieced itself together, that being its last stanza. And since then, periodically, I have received courteous letters from strangers, begging to know whether 'The Hunting of the Snark' is an allegory, or contains some hidden moral, or is a political satire: and for all such questions I have but one answer, 'I don't know!' And now I return to my text, and will wander no more. 

Stand forth, then, from the shadowy past, 'Alice' the child of my dreams. Full many a year has slipped away, since that 'golden afternoon' that gave thee birth but I can call it up almost as clearly as if it were yesterday--the cloudless blue above, the watery mirror below, the boat drifting idly on its way, the tinkle of the drops that fell from the oars, as they waved so sleepily to and fro, and (the one bright gleam of life in all the slumberous scene) the three eager faces, hungry for news of fairy-land, and who would not be said 'nay' to: from whose lips 'Tell us a story, please', had all the stern immutability of Fate! 

What wert thou, dream-Alice, in thy foster-father's eyes? How shall he picture thee? Loving, first, loving and gentle: loving as a dog (forgive the prosaic simile, but I know no earthly love so pure and perfect), and gentle as a fawn: then courteous--courteous to all, high or low, grand or grotesque, King or Caterpillar, even as though she were herself a King's daughter, and her clothing of wrought gold: then trustful, ready to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that utter trust that only dreamers know; and lastly, curious--wildly curious, and with the eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names--empty words signifying nothing! 

And the White Rabbit, what of him? Was he framed on the 'Alice' lines, or meant as a contrast? As a contrast, distinctly. For her 'youth', 'audacity', 'vigour', and 'swift directness of purpose', read 'elderly', 'timid', 'feeble', and 'nervously shilly-shallying', and you will get something of what I meant him to be. I think the White Rabbit should wear spectacles. I am sure his voice should quaver, and his knees quiver, and his whole air suggest a total inability to say 'Boo' to a goose! 

But I cannot hope to be allowed, even by the courteous Editor of The Theatre, half the space I should need (even if my reader's patience would hold out) to discuss each of my puppets one by one. Let me cull from the two books a Royal Trio--the Queen of Hearts, the Red Queen, and the White Queen. It was certainly hard on my Muse, to expect her to sing of three Queens, within such brief compass, and yet to give to each her own individuality. Each, of course, had to preserve, through all her eccentricities, a certain queenly dignity. That was essential. And for distinguishing traits, I pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion--a blind and aimless Fury. The Red Queen must be cold and calm; she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the tenth degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses! Lastly, the White Queen seemed, to my dreaming fancy, gentle, stupid, fat and pale; helpless as an infant; and with a slow, maundering, bewildered air about her just suggesting imbecility, but never quite passing into it; that would be, I think, fatal to any comic effect she might otherwise produce. There is a character strangely like her in Wilkie Collins's novel 'No Name': by two different converging paths we have somehow reached the same ideal, and Mrs Wragg and the White Queen might have been twin-sisters. 

As it is no part of my present purpose to find fault with any of those who have striven so zealously to make this 'dream-play' a waking success, I shall but name two or three who seemed to me specially successful in realising the characters of the story. 

None, I think, was better realised than the two undertaken by Mr Sydney Harcourt, 'the Hatter' and 'Tweedledum'. To see him enact the Hatter was a weird and uncanny thing, as though some grotesque monster, seen last night in a dream, should walk into the room in broad daylight, and quietly say 'Good morning!' I need not try to describe what I mean the Hatter to be, since, so far as I can now remember, it was exactly what Mr Harcourt had made him: and I may say nearly the same of Tweedledum: but the Hatter surprised me most--perhaps only because it came first in the play. 

There were others who realised my ideas nearly as well; but I am not attempting a complete review: I will conclude with a few words about the two children who played 'Alice' and 'the Dormouse'. 

Of Miss Phoebe Carlo's performance it would be difficult to speak too highly. As a mere effort of memory, it was surely a marvellous feat for so young a child, to learn no less than two hundred and fifteen speeches--nearly three times as many as Beatrice in 'Much Ado About Nothing'. But what I admired most, as realising most nearly my ideal heroine, was her perfect assumption of the high spirits, and readiness to enjoy everything, of a child out for a holiday. I doubt if any grown actress, however experienced, could have worn this air so perfectly; we look before and after, and sigh for what is not; a child never does this ; and it is only a child that can utter from her heart the words poor Margaret Fuller Ossoli so longed to make her own, 'I am all happy now!' 

And last (I may for once omit the time-honoured addition 'not least', for surely no tinier maiden ever yet achieved so genuine a theatrical success?) comes our dainty Dormouse. 'Dainty' is the only epithet that seems to me exactly to suit her: with her beaming baby-face, the delicious crispness of her speech, and the perfect realism with which she makes herself the embodied essence of Sleep, she is surely the daintiest Dormouse that ever yet told us 'I sleep when I breathe!' With the first words of that her opening speech, a sudden silence falls upon the house (at least it has been so every time I have been there), and the baby tones sound strangely clear in the stillness. And yet I doubt if the charm is due only to the incisive clearness of her articulation; to me there was an even greater charm in the utter self-abandonment and conscientious thoroughness of her acting. If Dorothy ever adopts a motto, it ought to be 'thorough'. I hope the time may soon come when she will have a better part than 'Dormouse' to play--when some enterprising manager will revive the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and do his obvious duty to the public by securing Miss Dorothy d'Alcourt as 'Puck'! 

It would be well indeed for our churches if some of the clergy could take a lesson in enunciation from this little child; and better still, for 'our noble selves', if we would lay to heart some things that she could teach us, and would learn by her example to realise, rather more than we do, the spirit of a maxim I once came across in an old book, 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.'

Through the Looking Glass I -- AN INTRODUCTION TO THIS READING

"Lewis Carroll," by Hubert von Herkomer

If you followed along with the reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland at all, you will have noticed a string of points and observations somewhat less typical than usual Alice inspections.  Of course, I can't resist the best of Carroll's jokes and observations, but my primary motive was (and so it will be for Looking-Glass) to look at Carroll's relationship with Alice as it appears in/through the text, which is often transparent in this regard, but periodically verging on opaque.  The frequency of such revelatory moments in Wonderland, however, is much less than it is in Looking-Glass, which, aside from being simply better written, is much deeper in it metaphors, pathos, and poetry.  And this makes sense.  While Wonderland was a write-up, at Alice Liddell's request (she was 10 at the time, despite her 7-year-old appearance in the book), of the stories Carroll frequently told the Liddell sisters on their outings, Looking-Glass was not motivated by request and rather gained its inspiration from a general downturn of Carroll's life.

Six years pass between the publication of the two books.  By this time, Carroll is no longer spending time at all with the Liddells (after a falling-out that began just the October after the summer outing which inspired Carroll's introductory poem, "All in the Golden Afternoon," as well as Alice's request to Carroll) and, more significantly in the moment, his father has recently died.  While I am not a Carrollian (not well-enough read), and my general scholarship abilities and opportunities often lacking (I'm stretched for time and often can't focus my literary energies for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time), I can say with some confidence that this latter turn for the worse (which subsequent emotions Carroll did not negotiate  at all well) is quite likely to have triggered a nostalgia for better times, which most certainly included a relapse of infatuation (asexual and of childish innocence) for Alice Liddell.  My primary evidence is, at best, weak, and would never be sufficient to merit the terms "conclusive proof," but stems from the beautiful and already-mentioned poetry of this second Alice book, as it holds up behind the actual events of the man's life.

As before, I'm not planning on spending inordinate amounts of time and space (though such is certainly possible, and has been done by tens of thousands of others) on all the typical footnotes available (see Martin Gardner's annotations, which are excellent, by the way, and upon which I frequently rely for assembling many of my questions and observations).  However, while my object is found (hopefully) on a deeper, more subjective/speculative level, there are a lot of footnotes that are simply indispensable, either because they're just so much fun, necessary for understanding the Victorian context, or otherwise fundamental in "getting" the questions I post.

TWO NOTES ON THE "READING QUESTIONS":  1 -- the questions I post are not always questions, but often quotations or descriptions from the text which I find interesting or leading and merit discussion; 2 -- I don't always know the answers or if even such answers are possible or exist, and hope the discussion will lead toward satisfactory conclusions.

Alice in Wonderland XV -- chapter 11 & 12: ALICE GROWS UP

Portrait of Alice Liddell,
by Charles Dodgson

The trial is the final scene before Alice awakes and book ends.  While there are some points of interest through the course of the trial, the real discussion begins at its completion with the few paragraphs of epilogue of the older sister's dream of Alice's dream.  It is here in this final moment that Carroll makes another anonymous appearance, this time seemingly to wave goodbye.

1. Wonderland is not a large place.  Nearly all of its characters are present in the trial, or appeared, also recently, at the croquet game.
2. Alice imagines the the animals out of the juror box will not survive, as surely as goldfish out of their bowl will not survive.  This is very much like the creatures of Wonderland and the "bowl" of Alice's dream.
3. Alice's growth through the second half of chapter 11 and through the end of the trial in chapter 12 is unmotivated by any contrivances of the dream.  She is growing on her own.  As Carroll controls the elements of the dream and Alice is growing independently of it and him, might this not symbolize the very maturing of Alice that Carroll dreads?  The Dream--his dreams of her, his wish for a different reality--will inevitably conclude.
4. In Carroll's eye, is Alice perhaps the guilty one--the one who committed, and as unwittingly as any Wonderland creature, the crime? tarts and hearts, and whoever stole them?
5. (42 is a bit of a magic number for Carroll and other writers, including Douglas Adams.)
6. The verses read by W. Rabbit (or maybe Herald/Harold?) is the second layer of parody of a near-thoroughly buried original song (below), the first of which was published by Carroll as "She's All My Fancy Painted Him."
7. Notice that in Tenniel's final illustration (of which there are 42, by the way) W. Rabbit has lost his costume, and the cards, with the exception of a few noses, have lost their personifications.
8. What is the determining factor (for it's not the trial) that wake's Alice?
9. Alice's older sister, I think, is channeling Carroll here at the end.  She re-dreams (remembers fondly, really) Alice's experiences and adventures, and is generally idealized by her.  Remember, this book was written as a gift for Alice.  The dream seems to me to be a dramatization of time spent together by Alice and Carroll.  Unfortunately, and no matter how beautiful, wonderful, confusing, or terrible, dreams end; and dreams like this tend to end most commonly when their subject grows up.  The beauty of a pleasant dream is that it is forever idealized (like Carroll's own idealization of it through the here-unnamed older sister) by she who had it.  Alice will remember it fondly forever, regardless of what may or may not happen through her future within reality.  (Interestingly, the way its all put together, and appropriately so, the dream is more Carroll's than Alice's, yet it is Alice who ends it.)

from John Shaw's booklet 

(I don't know more about it than this)

She's all my fancy painted her,

She's lovely, she's divine,

But her heart it is another's,

She never can be mine.

Yet loved I as man never loved,

A love without decay,

O, my heart, my heart is breaking

For the love of Alice Gray.

Drawing by Carroll in his hand-penned
copy of Alice's Adventures Underground

This portrait of Alice
was pasted into the
original book over
the drawing above.

Alice in Wonderland XIV -- chapter 10: STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT

I've said before that this isn't my favorite chapter, and I hope Alice found it tremendously entertaining, else for my money it's a relative failure (by comparison, and all old grudges left aside, I find far less of value here than in "The Caucus Race," which I finally recognize to have failed for years to adequately appreciate).  As entertainment--silliness for silly's sake--there's not much here for the modern reader, and little more than mockery of lessons for its once-readers; regarding substance, there may be something to parse from it, but, well ... I'll be honest with myself: there's little more than none, and only very slightly more than the offering of respite from the lunatic gravity of the Court.  Thoughts?

1. "Alice began to say 'I once tasted--' but checked herself hastily, and said 'No, never':  Is this a hint of character arc after all, albeit rather weak (see the 3rd and 4th comments HERE)?
2. Carroll's relationship with dancing was a little like his relationship with any given Institution--or at least the "World of Grownups"; he generally recoiled from the constraints of rules and did what he wanted, or otherwise mocked it later.
3. Once again, what do you make of the relationship between the source poetry, "The Spider and the Fly," and the parody?
4. Earlier in the book, Alice went with a "porpoise."  What is it now?  (Of course, this answer depends at least somewhat upon whether or not you believe she has found the Garden.)
5. What do you make of Alice's line, "I could tell you my adventures--beginning from this morning, but it's no used going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then"?  

The Spider and the Fly
by Mary Howitt
"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly.

"'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.

The way into my parlour is up a winding stair;

And I've got many curious things to show you when you are there."

"On, no, no," said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

* Carroll's spin is not the same poem that appeared in the original manuscript.


The Sluggard
by Isaac Watts

'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,

"You have wak'd me too soon, I must slumber again."

As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,

Turns his sides and his shoulders and his heavy head.

"A little more sleep, and a little more slumber;"

Thus he wastes half his days, and his hours without number,

And when he gets up, he sits folding his hands,

Or walks about sauntering, or trifling he stands.

I pass'd by his garden, and saw the wild brier,

The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher;

The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;

And his money still wastes till he starves or he begs.

I made him a visit, still hoping to find

That he took better care for improving his mind:

He told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking;

But scarce reads his Bible, and never loves thinking.

Said I then to my heart, "Here's a lesson for me,"

This man's but a picture of what I might be:

But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding,

Who taught me betimes to love working and reading.


Star of the Evening

by James M. Sayles

Beautiful star in heav'n so bright,

Softly falls they silv'ry light,

As thou movest from earth afar,

Star of the evening, Beautiful star.

(Chorus)

Beautiful star,

Beautiful star,

Star of the evening, beautiful star.

In Fancy's eye thou seem'st to say,

Follow me. come from earth away.

Upward thy spirit's pinions try,

To realms of love beyond the sky.

Shine on, oh star of love divine,

And may our soul's affection twine

Around thee as thou movest afar,

Star of the twilight, beautiful star.

* This song (yes, it was a song originally, and with music also by the same) was sung to Carroll by the Liddell sisters on August 1, 1862, as he records in his journal.  While I can't find much to be had by a cross-comparison between the original and the parody, I think there is significance somewhere between the nostalgic significance of the original and the manner in which its parody is sung by the Mock Turtle.  Additionally, consider the following:


On stars:  "Beautiful Star" is the second of two star songs mimicked by Carroll.  Recognizing simply that Carroll uses them at all (and his nostalgia connects more firmly to this second than the first) and what those originals may have meant for him, I can't conscionably employ "lampoon" to label his new renditions (I don't have any problem, however, labeling Carroll's rewrites of Watts' stuff as total derisive mockery).  I'll skip all the rhetoric: What if the central symbol of both, the star, is Alice?  Examine these two poems in their entirety and assume this metaphor.

The other star poem, whose original I failed to quote, shows up in "A Mad Tea-Party":


The Star

by Jane Taylor
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark
Thanks you for your tiny spark:
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye
Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveller in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Alice in Wonderland XIII -- AGAINST ANALYSIS

Gilbert K. Chesterton, on the day of Carroll's 100th birthday:

"Poor, poor, little Alice!  She has not only been caught and made to do lessons; she has been forced to inflict lessons on others.  Alice is now not only a schoolgirl but a schoolmistress.  The holiday is over and Dodgson is again a don.  There will be lots and lots of examination papers, with questions like: (1) What do you know of the following; mimsy, gimble, haddocks' eyes, treacle-wells, beautiful soup?  (2) Record all the moves in the chess game in Through the Looking-Glass, and give diagram.  (3) Outline the practical policy of the White Knight for dealing with the social problem of green whiskers.  (4) Distinguish between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

On the other hand one Phyllis Greenacre (whom I reference periodically) has done a thorough, and generally considered the best, psychoanalysis of Carroll and his books via the collection of his works and going as far as to express, for example, a conviction of an otherwise common "reversal of the unresolved Oedipal attachment" in the author, rendering Alice the mother figure, rather than the kings or queens or Duchess as parents.  Martin Gardner expresses gratitude for her work, yet also the wish that "she were less sure of herself."

My point here is that these two extremes bring about a couple of questions (yes, there is some not insignificant self-consciousness here on my part, and yes, I have answers to the following questions that satisfy any potential personal guilt; do you, or is this an adequately impersonal endeavor such that it holds no weight?):

1. Is it wrong (and therefor, am I wrong) to analyze and explicate a basically-absurd fantasy?
2. If not, then how far is too far?
3. Why might it not be advisable to be so sure of oneself?

A final question I find I have to ask myself (and myself alone): Why is it so deeply important that I so thoroughly understand my personal motives for attempting--digging--to as thoroughly understand Alice and her Maker?  This whole thing bears a near-spiritual resonance within me, and I don't know why.