C Is for Carroll

See, here's the thing about symbols:

Christopher Hitchens is dead.  Facebook was alive with the news for, uhm, about a day: "The world is a lesser place without him," some said (though apparently not so lessened that the effects of his demise reverberate beyond several hours).  I'm not too chuffed, but mostly just because I know so little about him, not because I have any particular ax to grind.  However, his death, together with the typical convergence of events or things read that generally lead me to a post like this, have made me think about a few things.

Hitchens wrote a book:  God Is Not Great, in which he asserts his atheism and appears to attempt an undermining of religion.  Apart from the utter futility of such an endeavor (I'm not sure that even God could dissuade just the moderate zealotry (you know, without pressing his "Smite" button, and all); and besides, I mean, c'mon! -- did such an intelligent person as Hitchens really think he could successfully attack and undermine something so essentially illogical with carefully meted and tempered argument, or was he, so much more likely, just trying to sell copy?), he makes some interesting arguments, the vast majority of which I'm not interested in here.  One of his weaker assertions, however, is an attack on the anachronisms--the "ill-carpentered fictions"--of the Bible, which affords a starting point for my discussion.

Let me be the first to say, and despite my love for the Bible, that the tome is chock full of some of the strangest tails and details I've ever come across.  Hitchens thinks so, too (one of the very few upon which we agree).  The Pentateuch, for instance, holds Moses doing and saying some weird stuff--freaky weird, even.  What Hitchens doesn't seem to acknowledge (or, well, he does, but sites it as a further weakness (and I'm not fighting that claim right now)) is the effects of the passage time, one linguistic/cultural and the other human error/interference.  Anyone who studies the Bible will cheerfully acknowledge the dire effect of imperfect people working on or on behalf of the scriptures--the otherwise perfect Word (of course, for most of us, one of the great benefits of the Bible comes directly from the very effort involved in parsing Truth from among all the problems) --not all of whom had good intentions.  But even under the best circumstances, people, despite God's perfection, make mistakes (and those who believe and really think about it will allow that God even permits these mistakes), so many of whom appear in their efforts to forward God's word.  Bigger still, however, than the weakness of even the best-intentioned of men (and there were plenty of malingerers), is the effect of cultural development.  Anachronisms aside, to us today, there's an awful lot, especially from the earliest books of the great Library, that doesn't make much sense and/or contradicts itself.  This brings me to the next of the convergences and closer to my ultimate point.

Languages and cultures shift and change.  Don't believe me (and, crap if you don't, you're freaking obtuse!)?  Just read a week's worth of posts from The Language Log.  Without putting too fine a point on it (and we've talked about it before vis a vis translation) it is essentially impossible--or, at best, impractical--to manage perfect cross-cultural  or cross-language shifts: a translation.  The best we can manage, and we can manage pretty well, is interpretation (hence the art and skill of interpreters against the woeful ineptitude of things like Google Translate and Word's grammar check) --interpretation which requires a ladder into the ether of metalanguage, which we are definitely not going to broach today.  The point is we cannot--EVER--perfectly understand a person of a different language and culture.  Period.  Move this to an extremity of language and culture like that of freaking Moses, and ... well ....  Get the point?

As it's Christmastime, cards and letters are starting to come in from family and friends.  In our house, we post these decoratively upon the cupboards of our kitchen.  Generally, the missives convey family news -- count on my dad to take a different tack (and I don't remember him ever being the one to scribe the annual letter for my folks; how things change!).  He talked about a conversation he and my mom had had regarding the interpretation of a word at the end of "Away in a Manger": "and fit us for heaven," the word fit, particularly, as it ... er ... fits in the line and within the song.  Unfortunately (for the issue at hand here, not the elegant point made by my father in his letter), fit is a pretty boring word, meaning essentially the same thing now as when the song was first published and even three hundred years before that.  The only difference in our uses of fit now as from before is a drop, inasmuch as Lewis Carroll did not mean, or at least did not only mean (most likely he meant both together) fit as a strong, sudden, uncontrollable physical reaction, but a canto: "The Hunting of the Snark, an Agony in Eight Fits."  This difference or change or shift or lack, or whatever you want to call it, in fit's etymology can still be sort of retrofit into the interpretation of the song, at least as a symbol.  And this is the point.

Symbols change just like words and language and culture.  (And I could write a book about this, but we're gonna keep it limited -- hopefully.  Besides, there are others far better qualified than me.)

There are all kinds of symbols, and you should get what I'm talking about by my saying that there are both universal symbols and one-use-only symbols.  The best source I can think of for any symbol--a specific symbol or type of symbol--is literature (go figure).  Authors and poets certainly use both, but the difference should be clear in, say, Catcher in the Rye, where Salinger applies a potentially universal symbol of a cliff and a very specific, one-use-only, symbol of a song lyric.  

(Want more symbols?  Dig out your freshman lit book from high school or even college.  I'd examine my own, but it's buried in the garage.  One in particular that I re-encountered recently is that of bells.  Consider their effect on faeries (or pixies -- you pick), but also in Longfellow's "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," Poe's "The Bells," and Tennyson's "Ring Out Wild Bells.")

Symbols like these, universal or not (another universal symbol, perhaps easier to see, is the black bird, used in both Through the Looking Glass and Tortilla Flat, among so many others), remain fixed, at least inasmuch as their value is fully encapsulated by the text of the book.  Regardless of cultural elements connected to the symbols or their cultural sources, the application of the symbols are self-contained.  Well, often.  Not always.  Consider Jane Eyre.  Early in the book, in the red room, there's the nastiness about the chimney.  With the exception of Santa Claus, we've largely lost our superstitions, and therefore associated symbolisms, of chimneys.

This brings me to my gripe.

It really bugs me when hyper-Christians get all bent out of shape about the "real meaning" of Christmas symbols (as distinguished from "the real meaning of Christmas," which is certainly not in dispute here; and the same goes for Easter): the Christmas tree, the yule log, Santa coming down the chimney, wreaths, poinsettias, and so on.  Easter eggs.  Generally, the hyper-Christians' gripes boil down to pagan rituals and druids and fertility rites and, somehow, the consumerism of the Holidays.  (If you're really ambitious, check out the symmetry between the development of our cultural symbols against the history of our English language.  Cool.)

(Are you offended by my coinage of "hyper-Christians"?  I apologize.  Anyway:)

Here's the thing: Sure, go through the histories--which interest me just as much as the next nerd--and, yeah, that's where a lot of this stuff got started.  But that's not what they mean anymore!  Things change!

Are you still scared of witches coming down your chimney?  I've never roasted a chestnut, but chestnuts are much closer to my cultural nostalgia associated with chimneys than hobgoblins.  (Actually, the majority of my  personal associations with chimneys involve me as a kid getting into a heckuva lot of trouble.)

Just because the symbol itself--the physical thing--persists, and entirely by tradition only (a thing much more rigid than whatever that tradition might have stemmed from (consider how many people go to church on Christmas and Easter not because they believe anything in particular--or particularly strongly--but just because that's what you do on Christmas and Easter)) doesn't mean that it's wrong to hold onto that thing!  It doesn't always matter what something means, but that it means something at all.  Think about it: what do the Christmas tree and the presents and the cookies and the fireplace and the wreath, and whatever else, mean--symbolize--for you?

See?  Right there--that internal meaning.  That is what Christmas is all about.  And if you happen to be Christian, it might mean that much more.  And not by compromise between the traditional symbols and the Bible stories, but because symbols change--we change--people change, and what we become--what and who we are--is what is most important.  You might be surprised, but examine yourself against the symbols in your life.  Those symbols probably define you (not you by them, but they as representations of who you are), not because the symbols might have meant something different to someone else sometime across the ages, but because of what it means to you and you alone.

Sunday Poetry XXXVII -- ISAAC WATTS . Yes, THAT Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts

I am not a fan of Isaac Watts, the English hymn-writer.  If you take a few minutes and learn a bit about him, it comes as no little mystery that Lewis Carroll so enjoyed lampooning him; aside from the terribly condescending didactic nature of Watts' writing--at least that of the stuff Carroll reported that Alice was forced to memorize for lessons--he seems to have no small amount in common with Carroll: both wordsmiths, both theologians, but logicians.  Generally I don't--okay, I've never--defended the older, stuffier of the two, until just last Sunday, when in church (a meeting, nonetheless, in which I'd been invited to speak) we sang a hymn of his (I'd never realized any of his words were even in our hymnal! and how lousy of me: now that I look, it appears he penned lyrics for ten hymns in our book!) and, apart from a sharp, nearly parallel correspondence with the particulars of my subject, I really enjoyed the hymn.  The problem is that I still don't like Isaac Watts, and, if I'm being honest with myself, I must admit that if I'd encountered this hymn outside the context of church, and particularly the combination of the thoughtfulness of my spiritual "place" that day and the beauty of the music, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have liked it at all.  Funny the effect and influence the reader (and I'm leaving out the debate over the contribution of music) brings to a poem.


Come, We That Love the Lord
Isaac Watts
Come, we that love the Lord,
And let our joys be known.
Join in a song with sweet accord,
And worship at his throne.


Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God,
But servants of the heav'nly King
May speak their joys abroad.


The God who rules on high
And all the earth surveys--
Who rides upon the stormy sky
And calms the roaring seas--


This mighty God is ours,
Our Father and our Love.
He will send down his heav'nly pow'rs
To carry us above.

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?

MARTIN GARDNER: Thank You!

I would be remiss if I didn't thank the late Martin Gardner (1914 - 2010).  It was his first edition of The Annotated Alice that attracted me to Alice in the first place.  It's a pretty thing.  I thought I knew Alice well enough, as I'd seen the movie.  But the book called, on, appropriately, a mid-November afternoon, lazy and snowy.  I stretched out on the couch to read.  It was the first book I read in one sitting.  I didn't read the notes that first time through, but eventually I got around to them, and then burgeoned my love and a substantial appreciation for Lewis Carroll's writing.

Interestingly, Carroll and Gardner were very similar.  While I'm no genius, as they both were, I can't help but feel some affinity toward both.

Thank you, Mr. Gardner.  Thank you, Mr. Carroll.  Your books and thoughts crackle with life.

Sunday Poetry XVIII -- Through the Looking Glass: CARROLL'S TERMINAL POEM

For its appearance and lilt that suggest but the purest of simplistic beauties, and its genius technique and allusions, this poem is perhaps Lewis Carroll's greatest piece of poetry.  It also represents everything that Carroll thought and felt of/for Alice Pleasance Liddell, the inspiration, subject, and protagonist of the two Alice books.  While it is certainly the opposing end-paper to Looking-Glass's introductory poem, it is, I believe, far more doleful, and in that regard, much more reminiscent of the melancholy winter outside the windows of chapter 1, kissing at the panes, but forever distant.  The first poem appropriately and artfully introduces the book, and also sets well the tone of this new distance yawning between him and his Alice; the closing poem indeed closes it all, shuts the book, but dog-ears the corner.  After the crowning, after the fireworks, after her waking, he steps back, sits, and allows himself the nostalgia of watching her distantly, under the clouds.

Of course, the poem is most famous for being an acrostic featuring Alice Liddell's full name.  Notice also that "Alice" begins the central line of the poem, and more, this is where she is moving "phantomwise," "under skies."  Some believe that the meter, if not the tercets (which serve the 21 letters of Alice's name), and the renewed reminiscence of rowing, matches the anonymous verse of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."  If you hold this thought and go all the way back and reread "All in a Golden Afternoon," you'll see that the girls there are referred to, appropriately, as a "merry" crew, but this masterpiece is far from merry.  He longs for the past, when things were so.

Finally, consider the last line.  Hold it up against the Red King and Alice's predicament remembered at the end of the final chapter.  What do you think?

A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —

Lingering in the golden gleam —

Life, what is it but a dream?

Through the Looking Glass VI -- chapter 4: BLACK BIRD

The first half of Chapter 4 (to the completion of Dee's recitation) manages a balance of true nonsense for nonsense's sake ("The Walrus and the Carpenter," for example, though I think there's yet some revelatory nuggets here anyway) and what I believe to be truly symbolic, either as intended by Carroll or as subconscious manifestation.

What are your thoughts regarding:

• the music from the tree, which starts when Alice and the Tweedles begin their brief dance and ends abruptly upon their finishing;
• Alice's narration of her story to her sister;
• "The Walrus and the Carpenter":

– There is evidence that Carroll intended no symbolism whatsoeverby this poem, and despite uncounted readers' attempts, and that it’s indeed complete nonsense, for Carroll left the choice of the second character to Tenniel, based upon the latter's preference in drawing, betwixt a carpenter, a butterfly, and a baronet.

– (from Roger Green, via Martin Gardner) The operetta Alice, by Savile Clarke extends the ending of the poem with an additional stanza, thus:

        The Carpenter he ceased to sob;

                The Walrus ceased to weep;

        They’d finished all the oysters;

                And they laid them down to sleep—

        And of their craft and cruelty

                The punishment to reap.

        —at which point the ghosts of two oysters return and dance upon the chests of the gluttons.  According to Gardner “Carroll felt, and apparently audiences agreed with him, that this provided a more effective ending for the episode and also somewhat mollified oysters sympathizers among the spectators.”

The second half of the chapter is significantly darker, even if you are an oyster sympathizer.

1. Which is Alice more justified to "like": the Walrus, who felt sorry for the oysters; or the Carpenter, who ate fewer of them?
2. The Red King is Carroll.  Defend.
3. Dee and Dum are mirror opposites (enantiomorphs; examine Tenniel's illustration of Alice preparing the brothers for combat.  Except for the accoutrement, they are indeed mirror images of each other).  If one stood before a mirror, he would not see himself (so to speak), but his brother.  As we're dealing with reflections, what do you think of someone battling with his/her own reflection?
4. This chapter opens with a famous nursery rhyme, which turns out in the end of the chapter to be prophetic--i.e. the crow actually comes.  Does Carroll, perhaps passively, hope that his writing might be similarly prophetic?  Does he have any such hope?
5. Interesting bit of double symbolism with the crow: first, consider the quotation from Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, below; second, the fact that in 585 B.C. the war between King Alyattes of Lydia and King Cyaxares of Medes ended--or was interrupted--by a total eclipse of the sun.  Tangentially, is there a connection between Alice's taking refuge under a tree and the somehow-avoidance of dark and death?

From Tortilla Flat:

        Where is Danny?  Lonely as smoke on a clear cold night, he drifts through Monterey in the evening.  To the post-office he goes, to the station, to the pool rooms on Alvarado Street, to the wharf where the black water mourns among the piles.  What is it, Danny?  What makes you feel this way?  Danny didn’t know.  There was an ache in his heart like the farewell to a dear woman; there was a vague sorrow in him like the despair of autumn.  He walked past the restaurants he used to smell with interest, and no appetite was aroused in him.  He walked by Madam Zuca’s great establishment, and exchanged no obscene jests with the girls in the windows.  Back to the wharf he went.  He leaned over the rail and looked into the deep, deep water.  Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods?  Do you see the procession of your days in the oily water among the piles?  He remained motionless, staring down.

        They were worried about him at Danny’s house, when it began to get dark.  The friends left the party and trotted down the hill into Monterey.  They asked, “Have you seen Danny?”

        “Yes, Danny walked by here an hour ago.  He walked slow.”

        Pilon and Pablo hunted together.  They traced their friend over the route he had followed, and at last they saw him, on the end of the dark pier.  He was lighted by a dim electric wharf light.  They hurried out to him.

        Pablo did not mention it then, but ever afterwards it was his custom, when Danny was mentioned, to describe what he saw as he and Pilon walked out on the wharf toward Danny.  “There he stood,” Pablo always said.  “I could just see him, leaning on the rail.  I looked at him, and then I saw something else.  At first it looked like a black cloud in the air over Danny’s head.  And then I saw it was a big black bird, as big as a man.  It hung in the air like a hawk over a rabbit hole.  I crossed myself and said two Hail Marys.  The bird was gone when we came to Danny.”

*

The Tweedles always frightened me more than anything else in the two books when I was a kid.

Through the Looking Glass V -- chapter 3: NAMES and NO NAMES

1. Curiously, there are no bishops in the book, except here, however, this very subtle mention: bishops were once calls elephants, and in Russian still are.
2. "'Oh, I liked it well enough--' (here came the favourite little toss of the head)...."
3. The chorus on the train--like a musical or a Greek play--interests me (not the "pounds a ____," but its very presence).  What do you make of it in the Alice context?
4. (The passengers in the train coach are full of puns and suggestions of once-famous puns and rhymes.)
5. An interesting combination: the gnat sighs, much like the lamenting wasp in the retracted "Wasp in a Wig" episode; there is a "shadow of a sigh" mentioned in the prefatory poem; trains are classic symbols of choice, change, and the relentless passage of time, and this train is also "traveling the wrong way" (a reversal, of course, but also a metaphor for Alice's growth away from Carroll); finally, remember that Alice, according to the conductor, has forgotten her name, which may correlate to the Red Queen's advice at the end of chapter 2.  The gnat: "I know you are a friend, a dear friend, and an old friend.  And you wo'n't hurt me, though I am an insect."
6. If Carroll is the Gnat (which, considering the conversation, is, I think, inevitable), and we extend the characteristic adult-ishness of Wonderland to Looking-Glass House, then perhaps the fact the insects' silence where Alice comes from works on a level beyond the simple fact that, duh, bugs don't talk, at least not to children; and this then emphasizes Carroll's grief, where Carroll is so fundamentally different than the rest of his caste.
7. The fantastic thing, at least for Carroll, of a secret place without names or labels is its utter anonymity.  Here, nothing would prevent him from approaching Alice, especially in such form as an innocent fawn.  Only on leaving would the fawn and the girl remember who they were and, as it happens and by necessary skittishness of the former, have to part (or is it not Carroll, but merely an analogue of the otherwise inevitable distance between human/wild animal and the impossibility of their continued relationship?).  Note also that in its very beginning Eden must not have had names either.  (This is another scene, so much like that of Alice's moment thinking favorably of the snow forever beyond the window, that touches my soul.)  From Martin Gardner:  The wood in which things have no name is in fact the universe itself, as it is apart from symbol-manipulating creatures who label portions of it because--as Alice earlier remarked with pragmatic wisdom-- "it's useful to the people that name them."  The realization that the world by itself contains no signs--that there is no connection whatever between things and their names except by way of the mind that finds the tags useful--is by no means a trivial philosophic insight.
8. All the issues with names, and Carroll's own split between writer Carroll and professor Dodgson!

"My First Sermon," by John Everett Millais

"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 II -- DEAR ALICE A-DISTANCED

This poem, I think, is Carroll's very best "literary" work.  Here he is at his most vulnerable, least satiric, and here it is that he most skillfully and sincerely uses the greatest of his lyrical strength.  It is subtle, lulling, and peaceful, despite the winter storming beyond the "pleasance" of this sitting room.

I don't like to reduce a poem to a chart, especially one so lovely as this, but in this context such is the most efficient way to connect thought to stanza.  If you have comments or questions, reference them by stanza.

1 Child of the pure unclouded brow       And dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet, and I and thou      Are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy-tale.	If we take this as a continuation from Wonderland and those final words offered by Alice’s older sister (really Carroll), then this idealization makes sense.  Remember, though only 6 months pass (exactly 6) between the fictional events two books, 6 years have pass between their publication dates, and in reality, Alice, who was 10 when she requested that Wonderland be written, is now actually 19.
2 I have not seen thy sunny face,      Nor heard thy silver laughter; No thought of me shall find a place      In thy young life's hereafter - Enough that now thou wilt not fail To listen to my fairy-tale.	Carroll is pretty meek now, and he seems to assume that he’s made less of an impression than he actually has; however, as he knows Alice as a person,   and what with her child-like mind, despite her forgetfulness of him—i.e.his assumption (accurate) that she’s moved on in her life, and he’s not part of the new one now she’s older—so he knows she will be adequately interested in the new story to read it, and that she will be amused.
3 A tale begun in other days,      When summer suns were glowing - A simple chime, that served to time      The rhythm of our rowing - Whose echoes live in memory yet, Though envious years would say 'forget'.	The summer days not only reference the eponymous golden afternoon in July, but the sunny, un-jaded days of youth.  He’s confident that this particular past is indelible, no matter what’s going on now—or not going on—between them; and those “envious years” are easily those first after they were separated by fiat of Mrs. Liddell.
4 Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,      With bitter tidings laden, Shall summon to unwelcome bed      A melancholy maiden! We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.	No matter the Freudians, this bed is not the wedding bed, but a reference to the generalized Christian belief  that death is but a sleep: temporary, passive, innocuous.
5 Without, the frost, the blinding snow,      The storm-wind's moody madness - Within, the firelight's ruddy glow,      And childhood's nest of gladness. The magic words shall hold thee fast: Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.	This is the setting that begins chapter 1 of Looking-Glass: winter, indoors, before the fireplace.
6 And though the shadow of a sigh      May tremble through the story, For 'happy summer days' gone by,      And vanish'd summer glory - It shall not touch with breath of bale The pleasance of our fairy-tale.	As he introduces the setting in 5, so he introduces the tone here in 6: this is the belated, melancholy epilogue of the love story—not unrequited, but only outgrown.  He points out that despite the distance and the “winter” (compared to summer's youth) –especially whose weather will surely run throughout the story, though only in tone, not precipitation and temperature— “it shall not touch with breath of bale” (think “baleful,” which is the correlating adjective) the “pleasance,” which, interestingly, is Alice’s middle name, whom he specifically introduces as he did tone and setting, of the tale.

Alice (Liddell) Hargreaves, all grown up.

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 X -- chapter 7: RAVENS and WRITING DESKS

"The Mad Tea-Party" is a joke (the good kind) --or, at least, a whole bunch of them all strung up back to back; some are inside jokes, and generally lost on those of us not parcel to Carroll's time and place; there are even a few things that appear to be jokes, but are cultural references, again generally lost on us.  As most of this chapter is nonsense (legitimately and hilariously so), the majority of what I'll put down here are just footnotes and explanations (thanks to Martin Gardener and Wikipedia, though there are few things that I even know on my own! (go figure)).

The Hatter: "mad as a hatter" was a phrase common for the time and referenced the once common occurrence of mercury poisoning from the process of felting beaver fur for hat felt.  This Hatter, however, is most likely--or most convincingly (there is a difference) --a caricature of a local furniture dealer, one Theophilus Carter, who invented an alarm clock bed (and so was rightfully represented as obsessed with time and waking--great foil for the Dormouse) and always wore a top hat.  Note also the quantity of mentioned furniture throughout the chapter.

The March Hare: Hares mate in March.

The Dormouse: This is a nocturnal animal, and therefore fairly groggy in the day.  They were commonly kept as pets by Victorian children who would house them up in old, straw- or straw-lined teapots.

Hair in Need of Cutting: Lewis Carroll reportedly kept his hair rather longer than was considered fashionable for the time (inferred from various letters to, from, and/or about him).  To put this in perspective, and add the only bit of evidence that I can find in this chapter to support my purpose for this particular read, no one made comment--plain and simply no one--about a girl's hair length back then and there.  It was, apparently, more than rude.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?:  From Lewis Carroll (and here without the printer's, not Carroll's, quelling typo) -- "Enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, vis: 'Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar [sic] put with the wrong end in front!' This, however, is merely an afterthought; the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all."

There are dozens of entertaining responses to the riddle, many made as entries to contests posted in various Carroll fan- or analytical-publications.  Here rare some of my favorites:

• Sam Lloyd (my favorite): 1, Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes; 2, because Poe wrote on both; 3, bills and tales are among their characteristics; and 4, because they both stand on their legs, conceal their steels (steals), and ought to be made to shut up.
• Roy Davenport: Because without them both Brave New World could not have been written.
• Peter Veal: Because one has flapping fits and the other fitting flaps.
• George Simmers: Because one is good for writing books and the other better for biting rooks.
• Tony Weston: Because a writing-desk is a rest for pens and a raven is a pest for wrens.
• Noel Petty: Because they are both used to carri-on decomposition.
• Francis Huxley: 1, Because it bodes ill for owed bills; and 2, because they each contain a river--Neva and Esk.

Two days slow: by various extrapolations, it is clear that the book, Alice, takes place on her seventh birthday, May 4.  According to A.L. Taylor (quoted from Martin Gardner), "on May 4, 1862, there was exactly two days' difference between the lunar and calendar months.  This, Taylor argues, suggests that the Mad Hatter's watch ran on lunar time and accounts for his remark that his watch is 'two days wrong.'  If Wonderland is near the earth's center, Taylor points out, the position of the sun would be useless for time-telling, whereas phases of the moon remain unambiguous.  The conjecture is also supported by the close connection of 'lunar' with 'lunacy,' but it is hard to believe that Carroll had all this in mind."

The three little sisters:  Because of a published couplet referring to Carroll and the Liddell family, we know the proper pronunciation of the name: "I am the dean and this is Mrs. Liddell // She plays the first, and I the second fiddle."  This is the second pun drawn between "little" and "Liddell."  In this case Elsie (pronounced L.C., of course) is for Lorina Charlotte (older sister), Lacie is an anagram of Alice, and Tillie is short for Edith's family nickname of "Matilda."

Why not M: Treacle is molasses -- M for molasses; mot to mention the March Hare's potential interest in putting himself in the story, as his name begins with an M, as well as the fact that it is he who calls out "Why not?"

Issues of Language (what are your thoughts (and these are pretty basic)):

• "The Hatter's remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English"
• Living on treacle
• Can't take more or can't take less
• In the well or well-in
• Drawing treacle

Sunday Poetry XV -- Art Chirography or Concrete Poetry

second post on Art Chirography and Concrete (-ish) Poetry here

I'm not sold on the name "Art Chirography" (check the pieces yourself) as it seems generally to indicate a single word or short phrase written in such a way as to indicate an image.  Of course, this might be splitting hairs, but the idea here is that the poetry--the poem in its entirety--is shaped in such a way as to indicate visually something significant to the subject at hand.  At it's most basic, the form of the words are meant to graphically emphasize an element of the poem; at it's most abstruse (some might so obtuse -- (let's combine!: obstruse)), the picture itself (like a hieroglyph or even a "droodle") is a poetic representation of an idea.  The artistic/literary value of this particular branch of poetry is generally as critically derided as genre fiction.  So judge for yourself.  I will attempt to provide a wide variety of material for your perusal.


Swan and Shadow
by John Hollander

Dusk                               Above the                        water hang the                                          loud                                         flies                                        here                                      O so                                     gray                                    then                                  What                                A pale signal will appear                                 When                   Soon before its shadow fades                                Where              Here in this pool of opened eye                                  In us           No upon us As at the very edges                                   of where we take shape in the dark air                                     this object bares its image awakening                                      ripples of recognition that will                                        brush darkness up into light even after this bird this hour both drift by atop the perfect sad instant now                                        already passing out of sight                                       toward yet-untroubled reflection                                      this image bears its object darkening                                     into memorial shades Scattered bits of                                   light           No of water Or something across                                  water               Breaking up No Being regathered                                   soon                    Yet by then a swan will have                                     gone                              Yes out of mind into what                                      vast                                       pale                                         hush                                           of a                                             place                                               past                            sudden dark as                                       if a swan                                           sang

Concrete Cat
by Dorthi Charles

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

by E.E. Cummings

                                  r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

                           who

       a)s w(e loo)k

       upnowgath

                       PPEGORHRASS

                                             eringint(o-

       aThe):l

                  eA

                      !p:

     S                                                         a

                               (r

       rIvInG                         .gRrEaPsPhOs)

                                                              to

       rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly

       ,grasshopper;


frog . pond
bt Geof Huth

The Mouse's Tale
by Lewis Carroll

            Fury said to a mouse,
                 That he met in the
                        house, 'Let us
                           both go to law:
                            I will prosecute
                          you.-- Come, I'll
                         take no denial;
                       We must have
                     a trial: For
                   really this
                 morning I've
               nothing to do.'
                   Said the mouse
                         to the cur,
                           'Such a trial,
                              dear Sir, With
                                  no jury or
                                judge, would
                               be wasting
                           our breath.'
                        'I'll be
                   judge, I'll
                 be jury,'
               Said cunning
             old Fury:
                'I'll try
                  the whole
                    cause, and
                        condemn
                            you
                              to
                               death.'

If you want more like the video game controller above (and many more besides -- good and bad) just do a Google image search for "concrete poetry" (or click it).


So what do you think?  Gimmick, kitsch, or poetry?