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Winter 2011
Volume II Issue 1 7 i
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Number 87
Knight Letter is the official magazine of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America.
It is published twice a year and is distributed free to all members.
Editorial correspondence should be sent to
the Editor in Chief at mahendra373@hotmail.com.
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions for The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch should be sent to
mahendra373@hotmail.com.
Submissions and suggestions for Serendipidity and Sic Sic Sic should be sent to
andrewogus@mindspring.com.
Submissions and suggestions for All Must Have Prizes should be sent to
joel@thebirenbaums.net.
Submissions and suggestions for From Our Far-Flung Correspondents should be sent to
FarFlungKnight@gmail.com.
© 2011 The Lewis Carroll Society of North America ISSN 0193-886X
Mahendra Singh, Editor in Chief
Ann Buki, Editor, Carrollian Notes
Cindy Watter, Editor, Of Books and Things
James Welsch & Rachel Eley, Editors, From Our Far-Flung Correspondents
Mark Burstein, Production Editor
Andrew H. Ogus, Designer
THE LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
President: Mark Burstein, president@lewiscarroll.org
Vice-President: Cindy Watter, hedgehogccw@sbcglobal.net
Secretary: Clare Imholtz, secretary@lewiscarroll.org
www.LewisCarroll.org
Annual membership dues are U.S. $35 (regular),
$50 (international), and $100 (sustaining).
Subscriptions, correspondence, and inquiries should be addressed to:
Clare Imholtz, LCSNA Secretary
11935 Beltsville Dr.
Beltsville, Maryland 20705
Additional contributors to this issue: Clare Imholtz, Fernly Bowers, Yoshiyuki Momma
On the cover: The suppression of a guinea pig, from Alice au Pays des Merveilles, illustrated by Rebecca Dautremer. See review on p. 51.
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THe R6CTORY UMBRSLLA «
Occupy Wonderland!
CLARE IMHOLTZ
A Perfect and Absolute Mystery
DOUG HOWICK
Through a Carrollian Lens: Emily Aguilo-Perez The Curious Door: Charles Dodgson isf the If/ley Yew
ALISON GOPNIK 6fALVY RAY SMITH
The Hunting of Alice in Seven Fits
ADRIANA PELIANO
MISCHMASCH
Hth
All Must Have Prizes
JOEL BIRNBAUM
CARROLLIAN NOT6S
Beaver Problems: Snark Arithmetic & Truculent Allusion
AUGUSTA. IMHOLTZ, JR.
Little Alice in America
CLARE IMHOLTZ
Lewis Carroll: Man of Science
FRAN ABELES
14 25
Leaves from the Deanery Garden — Serendipity — Ravings 33 On the Discovery of an English "Jabbenvocky" 36
ALAN LEVINOVITZ
38
40 41
43
OF BOOKS AND THINGS
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Simon Says MARK BURSTEIN
The Love-Ins MARK BURSTEIN
Beware of Greeks Bearing Snarks ?
DOUG HOWICK
Snarked! 0, 1, and 2
ANDREW OGUS
Alice's Adventvires in NYC Wonderland — the Text Generation
CINDY WAITER
The Logic Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll
SEN WONG
44
44
44
45
45
46
Forgotten the English? Alice aux pays des mervielles 51
ANDREW OGUS
52
The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography & Painting 1848 -1875
CLARE IMHOLTZ
FROM OUR FAR-FLUNG
CORR6SPONDGNTS
&
Art Of Illustration — Articles & Academia —
Books — Events, Exhibits, & Places — Internet & Technology —
Movies 6f Television — Music — Performing Arts — Things 53
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rhis issue of the Knight Letter talks of many things whose time has come, ranging from Adriana Peliano's surrealist-inflected tour of the Alician multiverse to Doug Howick's filling-in of the infamous blank spots in the Bellman's map. Alison Gopnik and Alvy Ray Smith have uprooted the obscure Carrollian role of Oxford's Iffley Yew, and just in time to furnish food and shelter for August Imholtz's mathematically challenged, tree-climbing Beaver. More logically minded readers can mull over Sen Wong's wide-ranging review of the latest install- ment in the LCSNA/University of Virginia's ongo- ing publication of Carroll's pamphlets, while more poetically-minded Carrollians can enjoy a well-earned giggle over Alan Levinovitz's Wittgenstein-influenced back-translation of "Jabberwocky."
We also have for you Clare Imholtz's explanation of the Anglo-American Little Alice confusion, a bit of bibliographic sleuthing that also serves to air out Carroll's disdain for Americans. Then there's Cindy Watter's brave review of an uber-hip text-message-ese version of Wonderland, a review that may well deliver the coup de grace to our more hyperdigitized Carrol- lians. The latter may wish to throw their Kindles on a bonfire of vanities and return, chastened, to the sim-
pler pages of the several other, more orthodox paper and ink Carrollian-themed publications reviewed in this issue.
Our ongoing series of member profiles, "Through a Carrollian Lens," continues with a contribution from Emily Aguilo-Perez, and we hope that other members will also pluck up the courage to send in their own stories of Carrollian peregrinations. One peregrina- tion in particular is taking on global proportions: the Alicel50 project. Jon Lindseth and Joel Birenbaum are leading this complex multinational effort, and any members who wish to assist them would be very wel- come. Further details can be found in Joel's current installment of All Must Have Prizes, which also tackles Madison Avenue's tacky love affair with Alice and her irresistible branding allure.
Our more alert readers will have noticed by now that the dominant theme of this issue is the strenu- ous avoidance of any dominant theme. This is no accident. Everything has a theme if only you can find it, and what better way to keep it safely hidden from chronic, sharp-chinned moralizers than by putting it into the nonsensical service of this issue of the Knight Letter}
MAHENDRA SINGH
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OCCUPY WONDERLAND!
CLARE IMHOLTZ
Mgain hosted by former LCSNA president Edward Guiliano, now president of the New York Institute of Technology, again the LC- SNA enjoyed a fabulous meeting on a scintillating fall day in New York City. We began with brief talks by Joel Birenbaum and Jon Lindseth, who are leading our efforts to organize "Alicel50: Celebrating Wonder- land," which will mark the 150th anniversary of the original publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. Potentially the most ambitious Alice event ever held, Alice 150, which focuses on Alice in the popular culture and not the dusky groves of academe, will include multiple exhibitions in New York — at the Grolier Club, the Morgan Library, NYIT, the New York Public Library, Columbia University, New York University, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, and Sotheby's — as well as satellite events across the country. More venues are being sought.
It all happens in October 2015. Alice 150 will also include themed windows at Bergdorf s, a gala dinner, and a multivolume book on translations — to include, for some 112 languages, essays and back-translations of the majority of pun-filled Chapter 7 ("A Mad Tea- Party"), said to be the most difficult to translate. A back-translation means that the foreign-language ver- sion is translated back into English, as literally as pos- sible, to reveal how true (or, in many cases, untrue) it is to Carroll's original.
The organizers need your help, particularly with planning events for children and youths, and particu- larly from people located in the New York area. Vol- unteers should please contact Joel Birenbaum (joel@ thebirenbaums.net) for particulars.
Our first speaker, Adriana Peliano, is an artist, writer, translator, and founder of the Sociedade Lewis Carroll do Brasil. Adriana, who is already known to most of us through her recent writings in this journal, was garbed appropriately in a pink, red, and black dress of her own devising, with an image of Alice (printed on a tea towel) , a black net overlay for a pin- afore, and a detachable neck ruffle.
Adriana's theme was transformations wrought by Alice — "Alice and I constantly recreate each other," she began. We transform ourselves each time we read Alice, and our readings transform Alice, again and again. Accompanied by her husband, Paulo Beto, on the synthesizer, and by her own Alice art and other videos constantly shifting on the screen behind her, Adriana presented a brilliant talk, adorned with wit, (e.g., "What is the use of a book ivith pictures and con- versations?" she queried), which you may read on p. 25. Adriana distributed a wonderful keepsake, Fringe Alice, actually a magical "oracle" which, if you bring it to life (instructions are included), "will listen to your dreams."
As Adriana suggested, the only fixed and immuta- ble thing about Alice is change: change as an unend- ing kaleidoscopic possibility-filled dialogue between Alice and her readers. Change was a theme to be car- ried forward by many of our speakers.
Next up was James Fotopoulos, an experimental filmmaker, whose most recent piece, Alice in Wonder- land, is a 98-minute video adaptation of Henry Savile Clark's 1886 staged Alice in Wonderland: A Dream Play for Children. James started making this film after see- ing an exhibit of Carroll's photographs; he was par- ticularly struck by a photograph of Marion Terry in which Carroll deliberately let the brick wall behind the backdrop show. This rejection of artifice — like Charlie Chaplin's letting the makeup on his face show in the film The Circus — seemed to James to offer a direct route to the past, and a hook by which to con- nect yesterday's media and technologies to today's, and amateur artists to professionals. He performed surgery, he stated, to "restore" Carroll's photographs to contemporary relevance by abstracting 245 draw- ings, done in coral and gray, from them. On these images, he superimposed Walter Slaughter's music from the Savile Clark play, similarly deconstructed, to provide a narrative for his film — a spine, as he said, along which he brought together personal referents, including his responses to the work of John Ruskin, Thomas Eakins, and other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists. And Alice in Wonderland, the book? The book — its tide, actually, as he has admit- tedly never read the book — was only a "vehicle" from which to jump into film. Fotopoulos said that it takes him years to make films, and then he doesn't under-
Mary Ann (later "Marion") Terry (1853-1930) in chain armor, July 1875.
Adriana Peliano
stand what he has done for years afterward. Perhaps that explains why the clips he showed (regrettably fol- lowing rather than preceding his ruminations) were so difficult for the audience to understand (at least for now). The film is definitely a changed "Alice."
We took a short break here, enabling attendees to purchase various Carrollian wares, including a "facsimile" of Alices Adventures under Ground in Car- roll's "handwriting," but translated into Portuguese by Adriana, and a few examples of the ongoing se- ries of Alice translations published by Evertype, the publishing company run by LCSNA member Michael Everson. In fact, earlier, during the announcement period, Everson had engagingly read a selection from the Scots translation he recently published — Ailice's Aventurs in Wunnerland.
LCSNA member Emily Aguilo-Perez's talk, en- titled "Good Alice, Naughty Alice," based on her Mas- ter's in English Education thesis at the University of Puerto Rico, gave more examples of how Alice chang- es. Why, Emily asked, do recent adaptations such as the Burton and SyFy films make Alice a teenager or young adult, rather than the little girl she was, and, perhaps more puzzling, why is this new, older Alice frequently presented with marriage proposals? Em- ily suggests that these phenomena are a response to the unfortunately widespread contemporary percep- tion of Carroll as a pedophile, and she gave several examples of images on the Internet illustrating this perception, citing "Internet rule 34," which states that anything that exists can be made sexual ("There is porn of it."). An older Alice not only appeals more to an adult audience, but can be eroticized without
Mark Burstein and Emily Aguilo-Perez
having the issue arise. Of course, many recent Alice adaptations are very sexualized — far more so than the Burton or SyFy versions — and sometimes even porno- graphic; American McGee's Alice and Lost Girls come im- mediately to mind, and even Dreamchild, years back, alluded to Carroll's supposed predilection.
Suitors and proposals appear in both the Burton and SyFy productions, and also, I can note, in the play Alice by Mary Hall Surface, which premiered in 2008. What's with these suitors? I wondered at the time. Emily suggests that the suitors, present only to be rejected by Alice, represent our cultural rejection of the uncomfortable notion that Alice Liddell might have married Charles Dodgson. Alice has changed, Emily noted, as our image of childhood has changed, increasing our anxiety about violations of childhood innocence.
LCSNA founding member and renowned Carroll scholar Prof. Morton Cohen, up next, promised "no visuals, only words." Morton spoke about Carroll's creativity in a talk called "Lewis Carroll's Epiphanies," refining ideas he had first presented at LCSNA's 1997 meeting in Collegeville, Minnesota. We are all imita- tors, said Morton; only a few of us are creators. There are two types of creators: visionaries, whose imagina- tions spin continuously; and mortals, like Carroll, who experience inspired visions once or twice in their lifetimes. The latter type Morton contrasted with An- thony Trollope, who was successful and disciplined, but not inspired. Carroll too was disciplined, but un- like Trollope, twice in his life was visited by the divine spark of inspiration — when writing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and again when writing The Hunting of
the Snark. Both sparks arose out of life events. Wonder- land's creative surge, Morton stated, was due to Car- roll's enchantment with Alice Liddell.
Frequently in the six years before Wonderland was written, Carroll marked his diary with a white stone — a symbol, for Carroll, of the intensity of his feelings — and each white stone day was connected with either Alice Liddell or photography. Twelve years later, an- other intensely emotional event — the mortal illness of his cousin Charlie Wilcox — precipitated Carroll's inspired writing of the Snark. Only on these two oc- casions was Carroll to reach such heights. Morton stressed that such flashes — epiphanies, as he termed them — were not the product of Carroll's own self, but were mysteries prompted by earthly events. Looking- Glass, while remarkable, was the product of Carroll's rational disciplined mind, and not inspiration.
Our next speaker was Alison Gopnik, a profes- sor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, an expert on child development, author of the best-selling The Philosophical Baby, and sister of writer Adam Gopnik (who has himself twice addressed our Society). Alison stated that this oppor- tunity to address the LCSNA was the culmination of an obsession she'd had since she was two years old and first encountered Alice. Her engaging talk bore a tide worthy of Conan Doyle or John Dickson Carr: "The Curious Door: Charles Dodgson and the Iffley Yew."
While recently on sabbatical in Oxford, Alison and her husband, Alvy Ray Smith (who is not only the co-author of Alison's talk, but an expert genealogical researcher and a co-founder of Pixar) , began a nifty and thorough piece of detection when they visited nearby Iffley and saw, standing in the yard of the lo- cal twelfth-century Romanesque church, a large, old (and as it turned out, very famous) yew tree with a stone-filled opening about four feet by four feet at its base. Alison immediately realized how such a large hollow entrance into a tree would captivate children's
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Alison Gopnik and Morton Cohen
vivid imaginations and irresistibly summon them in, just as Alice entered the doorway in a tree in Under Ground. She set out to see if the tree that Carroll drew on p. 67 wasn't in fact the Iffley yew. As Alison's talk, with all its fascinating and well-documented detec- tion, is reprinted on p. 17, we will not rehearse her arguments here.
Alison concluded her talk with a few trenchant observations from her research on children's imagi- nations. When children imagine alternate worlds, they are essentially creating intuitive theories; they are generating counterfactuals in order to under- stand their world, just as adult scientists do. Child- hood, which lasts longer in human beings than in any other species, is the time in which we do our per- sonal R&D (research and development); adulthood is for production and marketing. Carroll saw the links between children's wide-ranging imaginations and adult logic and empiricism. He knew that any child would recognize that huge hole in the Iffley yew as a doorway to another world. Years ago, Alison wrote, "At twenty Alice changed my life." It appears Alice is still doing that — and not only for Alison.
Jeff Menges, a fantasy artist and illustrator, was our final speaker. Jeff is the editor of Dover's forth- coming Alice Illustrated, a collection of 125 Alice illus- trations, which includes notes by Jeff and an intro- duction by LCSNA president Mark Burstein. Most of
the illustrations in the book will be by Golden Age illustrators, those from the 1880s to the 1920s, a pe- riod that just happens to be Jeff s specialty. Jeff stated that it has been fun to collect the illustrations, and he appreciated Mark's help with that. He noted that there are three scenes that evidently must, de rigueur, be included in every Wonderland: the caterpillar, the tea-party, and the flying playing cards.
Jeff showed sample illustrations from the Wonder- lands of about fifteen or twenty artists, with succinct comments on each from the point of view of a graph- ic artist. He mentioned, for example, Rackham's sub- tle tonal quality, the surreal visage of Peter Newell 's caterpillar, Millicent Sowerby's overuse of profiled faces, the resemblance between Mabel Attwell's char- acters and the "Campbell Kids," the exquisite compo- sition of Charles Folkard's dancing spoons, and so on through Gwynedd Hudson, Milo Winter, Harry Roun- tree, and many more, culminating in Barry Moser. Moser, who is the only post-Tenniel artist in the book not of the Golden Age, is included because of Jeffs admiration for his work and because of Barry's gener- osity in allowing Dover to print his images. Jeffs talk was a delightful survey of art from one of our favorite books, and a most enjoyable way to close our formal meeting. From NYIT, we went a few blocks north on Broadway to Cafe Fiorello, where we enjoyed a deli- cious dinner and scintillating conversation.
HEART OF THE CITY
MARK TATULU
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A PERFECT AND ABSOLUTE MYSTERY
DOUG HOWICK
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Ml though I have sailed on most of the oceans on this planet, I have no particular interest in ocean charts other than an interest in the Bellman's blank one in The Hunting of the Snark. However, in 2007 the well-known illustrator and ani- mator Michael Sporn opened a discussion on his "splog" comparing the depiction of the Bellman's map in his own film of the Snark (1989) with those of several other illustrators — namely Barry Smith (1995), Mahendra Singh (2007), Quentin Blake (1976), and Ralph Steadman (1975). This prompted responses from several people, including Mahendra Singh, the current editor of the KL, and myself. Mi- chael explained that he'd had trouble finding fur- ther illustrations, as most of his books were then in storage, and he invited me to contribute any other Snarky maps I'd like him to show.
As my predominant interest in the Snark has been comparing the interpretations of a wide range of il- lustrators (see KL 82, "The Hunting of the Butcher"), I sent Michael several straightaway, some of which he showed in a further post extending the discussion a week or so later. In that post, he showed the maps cre- ated by Frank Hinder (1989), Harold Jones (1975), Michael Capozzola (2005), Kelly Oechsli (1966), John Lord (2006), Max Ernst (1950), Jonathan Dixon (1992), and Helen Oxenbury (1970).
As Michael had not used all of my offerings at the time, Mahendra suggested that I should write a paper about "the blank chart." It's been very much an "on again, off again" production, but finally, this is it — and I have more offerings than I realized.
In searching the World Wide Web for further in- formation (or inspiration), I discovered another blog quite unrelated to Carroll or the Snark and entitled "Underdog of Perfection" (http://blog.room34. com/archives/410), in which the author disclosed that he was afraid of blank spaces on maps. He added that the promising term "cartophobia" turned out to refer to the much more mundane (and much more understandable, I suppose) "fear" of maps in the sense of being intimidated by maps and not under- standing how to read them. His problem was precisely the opposite: He loved maps and could study their minutiae in detail for hours. And he thought that
must be exactly why "voids" on the maps freaked him out so much ... it's like stepping into nonexistence.
There we go again! How often do we hear the concept of nothingness linked to Carroll? In the Dis- ney movie, Alice says, "If I had a world of my own, ev- erything would be nonsense. Nothingvroxild be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And con- trariwise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"
In 1982, Stefan Kanfer of Time magazine dis- cussed the publication of the Centennial Edition of Martin Gardner's Annotated Snark by Kaufmann, and, drawing heavily on Gardner's Preface, commented: "The Snark is a poem about being and nonbeing, an existential poem, a poem of existential agony. The Bellman's map is the map that charts the course of humanity; blank because we possess no information about where we are or whither we drift. The Snark is, in Paul Tillich's fashionable phrase, every man's ulti- mate concern. This is the great search motif of the poem, the quest for an ultimate good. But this motif is submerged in a stronger motif, the dread, the ago- nizing dread, of ultimate failure. The Boojum is more than death. It is the end of all searching. It is final, absolute extinction, in Auden's phrase, 'the dreadful Boojum of Nothingness.'"
The blank ocean chart echoes Alice's dialog with the Cheshire Cat, in which we learn that it doesn't matter which way you go if you don't much care where you're going.
The chart is a concept to stir the imagination. Why else would Carroll have produced a picture of nothing?
WHO PRODUCED THE FIRST OCEAN CHART?
Astonishingly, there is scant information to give a de- finitive answer to such a basic question. Furthermore, there are many references that state quite categorical- ly that the illustrator was Henry Holiday. This I doubt. In my opinion, the most authoritative references regarding Henry Holiday's Snark illustrations are "De- signs for the Snark" by Charles Mitchell (1982) and the writings of Henry Holiday himself, such as "The Snark's Significance" (1898) and "Reminiscences of My Life" (1914).
LATITUDE
Scale of Miles.
OCEANC HART.
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Figure 1. The original Ocean
Figure 2. A frequently cited Ocean Chart
Mitchell surveys and catalogues: "(a) Henry Holi- day's known drawings for the Snark, (b) the known proofs of Joseph Swain's cuts (of the blocks) and (c) the surviving wood blocks of the nine illustrations." He meticulously traces and verifies all of these and, regardless of the chronology of their creation or adap- tion; it suffices that I summarize here those drawings by Holiday that progressed to become woodblocks faithfully cut by Swain and that survived finally to be- come illustrations in the first edition of the Snark:
Frontispiece Fit the First
The Landing
The Crew on Board, the Butcher and the Beaver
Fit the Third The Baker's Tale Fit the Fourth The Hunting
Fit the Fifth Fit the Sixth
The Beaver's Lesson The Barrister's Dream
Fit the Seventh The Banker's Fate
Fit the Eighth The Vanishing
These are the "nine illustrations by Henry Holi- day" so frequently reproduced and mentioned in ref- erences. For all the published detail about the origins and development of the nine illustrations, there is surprisingly little detail about the front cover illustra- tion, although Holiday records that the illustration for the back cover originated from a sketch he had made of a bell-buoy at Lands End. However, add the illustrations of the front and back cover to the other
nine, and we have eleven — and no mention anywhere of the Ocean Chart!
I am convinced that it was indeed Carroll who produced it! There is absolutely no evidence that it was produced by Holiday — so who else? It is Carroll's Ocean Chart!
QUOTES AND MISQUOTES
The fascinating thing about my investigations into the Bellman's map is that there are so many references to it by people with no particular interest in either Carroll or the Snark. Many of these are by cartographers, ge- ographers, mathematicians and a whole lot of others. Maybe this is the reason for so many inconsistencies .
For example, one of the most frequently cited il- lustrations attributed to Henry Holiday is as shown in Figure 2 beside the original in Figure 1. Now I sim- ply do not know where the version in Figure 2 came from, but it gets a lot of reproduction on the Web. Maybe some of our readers can enlighten me. Not only is it not by Holiday (see above), there are several ways in which this illustration differs from that of the original edition, notably:
Inclusion of "SOUTH" at base Inclusion of "Compass-Points, N, E, S, W." Exclusion of "OCEAN-CHART" Exclusion of "of Miles" after "Scale" Different sequence of dots on scale
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The sequence of dots on the scale has always in- trigued me. The original has a "22132" arrangement, but I have been unable to make anything of that. I've also wondered whether it was a message in Morse code, which had been invented by Samuel Morse in 1844. If so, it would spell "IIESI," which doesn't make any sense to me either. Again, maybe some of our readers can enlighten us.
A common textual misquote is "He had brought a large map ..." The Bellman didn't bring a large map representing the sea, he bought one. At least, that is what the crew were given to understand. Really? Are we, the readers, as gullible as the crew members? Are we to believe that, previous to the voyage, the Bell- man had spent his own money to buy a large map representing the sea?
As the map had "not the least vestige of land," it really was of no consequence which sea was rep- resented on the map. Thus, we must look for other clues or instructions as to how the crew should locate the Snark.
Maybe a clue had already been foreshadowed in Carroll's Preface, in which he explains that although he might do so, he will not point "to the strong ar- ithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated" in the poem itself. He goes on to explain Rule 42 of the Na- val Code under which "No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm." And the acronym for Man at the Helm is — MATH. How's that for cautious inculcation?
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Figure 4. Ocean Chart with ship 's track
THE BELLMAN
Very few Carrollian scholars seem to have analyzed the Bellman in any great depth. However, John Tu- fail (2003) suggested that there might have been two Bellmen, the one a navigator, supremely confident in his ability to successfully guide his ship and his crew, and the other an imposter whose main credentials seem to be his ability to impose his authority on a mis- guided crew. While not in favor of the two-Bellmen theory, I suggest that there are sufficient behavioral contradictions to indicate that — in common with oth- er more famous nautical and military leaders, such as Admiral Lord Nelson and Napoleon Bonaparte — the Bellman's mood swings may have been attributable to bipolar disorder.
So if he bought the map rather than brought it, maybe he didn't bring it at all. There is no indica- tion that he actually gave it or showed it to the crew — he merely talked to them about it. The crew found that they could understand the concept of a blank map because they really had no idea of where they were going or whether they were on the right course. Other maps with "conventional signs" that are "such shapes, with their islands and capes" would have dem- onstrated the fact that they were lost, as a result of their own incompetence, and the fact that their brave
Captain "had only one notion for crossing the ocean and that was to tingle his bell."
So to talk of a possibly nonexistent blank map was the Bellman's way of covering up his own incompe- tence— of which he was very well aware. He was a con man who covered his incompetence with blustering bravado. He always needed to appear to be in control of any situation, and if not, to divert the attention of his crew with booze (grog) or jokes or even quota- tions to make him look grand. It is typical that he mis- quoted the opening words of Mark Antony's oration at Caesar's funeral in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (as noted by Martin Gardner) .
The reason the Bellman usually wears the "mys- terious smile as if he knows something that nobody else could understand" (Oleg Lipchenko in KL 86) is that he knows he's a twit but he thinks that nobody else does! So he gives steering commands that his crew cannot interpret, and therefore they wonder "what on earth was the helmsman to do?" The answer, of course, is that they were not on earth but on the ocean, where steering was determined by the MATH of the difficult art of navigation, rather than by the perplexed and distressed Bellman. So the MATH en- abled them to circumvent the danger and to land at last. Once they had done so, the Bellman quickly re- gained his leadership status and attempted to over- come their low spirits by telling bad jokes. When that only made them groan, he gave them all enough booze to win back their support — "so they drank to his health and they gave him three cheers."
MAD MAPS
In order to do justice to my task, I felt that I need- ed to be sure that I understood the basics of cartog-
raphy. I therefore delved into an amazing publication called The Carte Blanche Atlas (Figure 3). I soon re- alized that this was a reliable source of information, as it contains Carroll's Ocean Chart and cites Fit the Second without errors.
I learned that there are crucial differences be- tween a blank map and a blank page. Unlike a blank page, a blank map:
is designed by a cartographer
is a frame
represents a space or "territory"
has orientation
is readable
has accuracy
suggests scale (though it may sacrifice exactitude in favor of visual utility)
is informative (unavailability of data does not equal nonexistence of data)
is something unexpected
Obviously, the Ocean Chart meets all of these cri- teria, and if it's perfect, then don't try to fix it! Howev- er, just a few years ago, a project was set up to add color to the original Snark illustrations, and they couldn't resist adding to the Ocean Chart (Figure 4).
There has been some discussion by Martin Gard- ner (1962) and Clare Imholtz (2003) comparing the Bellman's map in the Snark and the 1:1 scale map mentioned by Mein Herr in Sylvie and Bruno Conclud- ed. Certainly, the latter would have been the largest map ever created. However, the Klencke Atlas (1660) at almost six feet tall, with 41 printed wall maps on paper, is the largest book in the world (Figure 5). It
Figure 5. The world's largest (printed) map
Figure 6. The world's smallest Snark map
is possible that my miniature copy of the Bellman's Map, at 1 x 1 inches (3.8 x 3.2 cm) is one of the small- est (Figure 6).
TWENTY-ONE CHART INTERPRETATIONS
I have been fascinated by the many different ways in which the many Snark illustrators have interpreted the details of Fit the Second as they relate to the so- called "Blank Map" and the ways in which the illustra- tions suggest that the Bellman conveyed the informa- tion to his crew.
In the hope that at least some of my readers take a second look at each of them, I have selected 21 of these. They are depicted below in chronological or- der of publication.
References
Blake, Q. (1976). The Hunting of the Snark. Folio
Society, London. Bo Press (2009). Bellman's Map. Bo Press Miniature
Books, Riverside, California. Castle, T. (2005): http://truds.deviantart.com/
gallery/?offset=24 Capozzola, M. (2005). http://capozzola.com/ Conley, C. (2007). The Carte Blanche Atlas of Uncharted
Territories. Perfect-bound Paperback, USA. Dixon, J. (1992). The Hunting of the Snark. Lewis Car- roll Society of North America, New York. Ernst, M. (1950). La Chasse au Snark. Editions Pre- mieres, Paris 1950. Fisher, J. (2010). The Hunting of the Snark. The Folio
Society, London. Gardner, M. (1962). The Annotated Snark. Simon &
Schuster, New York. Gardner, M. (1981). "The Annotated Snark." In
Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark. "William
Kaufmann, Inc., in cooperation with Bryn Mawr
College Library, Los Altos, California. Hinder, F (1989). The Hunting of the Snark. Carroll
Foundation, Flemington, Australia. Holiday, H. (1898). "The Snark's Significance."
Academy, 29 January. Holiday, H. (1914). Reminiscences of My Life. Heine-
mann, London. Howick, D. (2009). "The Hunting of the Butcher."
Knight Letter II, Issue 12, Number 82. Imholtz, C. (2003). Borges and Carroll: On a Scale
of One to One. Knight Letter Vol. II, Issue 1,
Number 71. Jones, H. (1975). The Hunting of the Snark. The
Whittington Press, Andoversford. Kanfer, S. (1982). "Books: Wonderland Without
Alice." www.time.com/time/magazine/
article/0,9l7l,925199,00.html
Kerman, D. (1989). The Hunting of the Snark. Shva Publishers, Israel.
KlenckeJ. (1660). The KUncke Atlas.
Lipchenko, O. (2011). "Butcher in the Ruff: Render- ing the Snark (A Work in Progress)." Knight Letter II Issue 16, Number 86.
Lord, J. V. (2006). The Hunting of the Snark. Inky Parrot Press, Artists' Choice Editions, Church Hanborough, England.
Minnion.J. (1976). The Hunting of the Snark. John Minnion, London.
Mitchell, C. (1981). "The Designs for the Snark." In The Hunting of the Snark. William Kaufmann.
Oechsli, K. (1966). The Hunting of the Snark. Pantheon Books, New York.
Oxenbury, H. (1970). The Hunting of the Snark. Heinemann, London.
Pomar, J. (1999). La Chasse au Snark. Edition de la Galerie PILTZER, Paris.
Puttock, B. (illustrator), and Cathy Bowern (author) (1997). The Hunting of the Snark Concluded. Angerona Press, Ryde.
Rosett-Hafter, G. (2007). The Hunting of the Snark. Bell Books, London.
Rubinger, A. (2000). The Hunting of the Snark. Gal- Kalderon Publishing, 22 Nahmani St., Tel Aviv, Israel.
Singh, M. (2007). The Hunting of the Snark - Fit- fully illustrating Lewis Carroll 8c other graphic agonies, www.justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot. com.
Singh, M. (2010). The Hunting of the Snark. Melville House, Brooklyn, New York.
Smith, B. (1995). "More Things in Heaven and Earth." Grazer Philosophische Studien, 50.
Sporn, M. (1989). The Hunting of the Snark. Michael Spom Animation, New York.
Sporn, M. (2007a). http://www.michaelsporn animation.com/splog/?p=1297.
Sporn, M. (2007b). http://www.michaelsporn animation. com/splog/?p=l 300.
Steadman, R. (1975). The Hunting of the Snark. Michael Dempsey, London.
Tigertail Associates (2004). The Hunting of the Snark. Tigertail Associates, Los Angeles (with restora- tion and color rendering of the original illustra- tions by Henry Holiday by George Gennerich). http://www.tigtail.org/TIG/HOT/Scripts/ carroll_hunting_of_the_snark.l876.pdf.
Tishkov, L. (1991). Ohota na Snarka. Rukitis, Moscow.
Torgard, A. (1994). EftirSnarki. Forlagio Sprotin.
Tufail.J. (2003). The Illuminated Snark. International Carroll Conference, University of Rennes 2, October 17-18.
2. Helen Oxenbury, 1970
i. Kelly Oechsli, 1966
4 . John Minnion, 1976
3. Harold Jones, 1975
5. Quentin Blake, 1976
IO
7. Frank Hinder, 1989
8. Michael Sporn, 1989
i o. Jonathan Dixon, 1 992
9. Leonid Tishkov, 1991
11
14- Ami Rubinger, 2000
12
1 8. Geneva Rosett-H after, 2007
20. Mahendra Singh, 2011
1 9. Jeffrey Fisher, 2010
21. Oleg Lipchenko, 2011
13
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*s-
EMILY AGUILO-PEREZ
ntirotub a Carrolmn Lens
I remember the first time I "met" Alice in Wonder- land. I was maybe five or six years old, and my mom played a videocassette that she had used to record several cartoons, including the Disney movie. She had recorded it when it premiered on the Puerto Rican network that was then called Tele-Once. Although the movie was in Spanish and I understood the conversa- tions, I really did not have any idea of the depths of Alice's story. For me, it was just a movie about funny characters, colorful places, and beautiful songs. My attraction to the movie began with my fascination with the Mad Hatter, for he was the character that I loved the most. His big hat and funny comments made me want to one day sit down for tea with him. During a trip to Disney World in the summer of 2008, when meeting that character, I — a 22 year old at the time — almost started to cry. Then I met him again in 2009, and it was as magical as the year before.
Though the Hatter remains a favor- ite character, Alice has taken a very spe- cial place in my heart. I began to see some resemblance between Alice and myself. At first, when I was a child, I thought the Disney movie was about a little girl who got lost in the woods and just wanted to go home. I could relate to that. Not long before that, I had gotten lost at the supermarket and thought that I would nev- er see my parents again. But I remembered the very good advice that my parents had given me, and I went straight to the manager's office, where my parents were paged and soon picked me up. I always thought that Alice should have done something similar, but in a way she was thinking similarly to me; she thought about all the good advice that she had been given and tried to apply it to her situation, although for her it was not successful. After that, I read the books, fell in love with them, and understood how many important elements the movie had removed. Yet, I never imag- ined that a story I loved so much would become such an important part of my life.
In 2008, during a Literature Festival at my univer- sity, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagiiez, I had
the honor of portraying Alice in one of the drama skits. By that time no one was aware of my love (and beginning obsession) with Alice and the stories. It was a magical moment for me to put on a blue dress, white stockings, a white pinafore, and become a little girl again. I had to recite the lines I had been memo- rizing throughout my childhood while watching the Disney movie. In this particular case, the director of the skit had done a mixture of the book and the Dis- ney animation. I had been preparing for this role my whole life — so much so that I was able to improvise and actually become Alice in another skit, where we had no script and different literary characters were being interviewed. At that moment I became Alice. On other occasions I also became the Mad Hatter. In fact, for three con- secutive years I dressed up as the Hatter for Halloween. It was always fun to be someone different, especially someone from my favorite story. Of course, playing dress-up and memorizing lines have not been the only moments of my life where Lewis Carroll played a role.
The stories about Alice had an enor- mous significance in my life as a gradu- ate student as well. Every time I read the books, I am able to discover something new; I am able to laugh at a new joke I finally understand. I find new linguistic features that puzzle my mind and challenge my intellect. More importantly, every time I read the books, I am able to identify with Alice for different reasons. In a way, I am a real-life Alice. I remember not fitting in and always being odd in school. I never wanted to follow the crowd, and I did not give in to peer pressure, but it was never a painful experience for me. Alice is somewhat different from everyone around her and she does not always do what she is told. She speaks her mind and stands up to others, even adults, always defending her beliefs. Most of all, she cares about those around her, both good and bad, and she tries her best to understand the pains and frustrations of the people and creatures she has con- tact with. Alice, more often than not, does not fit in, not in the real world and not in Wonderland; yet she
14
always follows her heart, even if it means being differ- ent. She goes through difficult moments in Wonder- land, yet she is able to overcome any struggle, turning what could have been a nightmare for someone else into an adventure. The stories about Alice became my outlet and my comfort when I felt that I did not be- long anywhere, especially because I felt a connection to her that I have never felt with any other fictional character.
Curiouser and curiouser, it was the newer Alice who was emerging in the films of the twenty-first cen- tury that I could not identify with anymore. In Tim Burton's 2010 film and in SyFy's Alice, the character was an adult, yet despite her being closer to me in age than the Alice of the books, there was a certain magic, a part of the original character, her charisma, her personality, that just was not there anymore. The new Alice was the heroine of the story, but for very different reasons. She was not driven by curiosity, she was afraid to explore, she despised being in such a fantastical place. All that magic had been taken away from the adult versions of Alice, and all that was left was a woman who had a prophecy to fulfill. She was to slay a monster. Seeing this change in the story mo- tivated me to explore why this had happened and to write my master's thesis about her. My aim was not to criticize the movies or to pinpoint everything that was changed from the books, but to understand how Al- ice had grown up. It did not happen overnight. This growth was not the result of eating a piece of mush- room; the change happened progressively. It was for this reason that I took on the challenge of delving more closely into the adaptations of Alice and the representation of the character.
It was also during this time that I became aware of the existence of a frabjous group named the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, and after learn- ing more about it, I became a member. I discovered even more about the joys of Wonderland through this group. It offers an academic yet friendly forum where scholars and fans of Lewis Carroll's work can get to- gether in an intellectual exchange. Being a member of this society has provided me with different forums and resources I would have not found otherwise, and better prepared me for my research. The first meet- ing I attended was at the Rosenbach Museum and Li- brary in Philadelphia in April, 2010. This was my first time traveling by myself, so I felt like Alice exploring a new world on my own. Nevertheless, I loved every moment of it! Not only was I able to meet new people and visit historical places, I was able to learn so much about Alice and I felt special in being able to see some of Carroll's original documents. I was already excited about the following Fall meeting and became even more excited when I found out that Jenny Woolf was one of the speakers. Her book was one of the main
sources for my thesis, and I really wanted to meet such a brilliant person.
Having already made arrangements to go, three days before the November meeting, tragedy struck. My grandmother passed away, and even though I had my plane tickets and suitcase ready, family always comes first, especially when there is a loss. However, in spring 201 1 I had the opportunity to fly to the West Coast for the first time and attend another amazing LCSNA meeting, this time in San Francisco. Once again, I met another group of wonderful Wonderland "creatures," and this time I was able to spend more time with them. Despite being sick the entire week- end, I had one of the most Wonderful times of my life. I couldn't believe I was having so much fun while also doing further research for my thesis. Moments like those reminded me why I had chosen Alice as the topic for my thesis, and they made me realize that I truly enjoyed and loved the work I had to do; even more so when I was invited to speak at the fall 2011 meeting — a real honor for me! It is exciting to be able to share my work, my thesis, my Wonderland with such a fantastic group of people.
During the examination part of my thesis defense, one of my professors asked me, "Did you choose the topic because you were passionate about Alice in Won- derland?" My answer was, "Yes and no." Of course, I briefly explained to them my contradictory response. Yes, I have always loved the stories, the characters, the music, the costumes, and pretty much anything relat- ed to Alice. Once in a while, I would talk to my friends and family about Alice in Wonderland, and every time I visited Disney World, I wanted to meet some of the characters. Yet, I never thought of it as being passion- ate about the stories, I was just a fan. In retrospect, I think it could even be called an obsession. I collected pins, bought Alice in Wonderland t-shirts, bought dif- ferent versions of the books, and watched more movie adaptations. It wasn't until I selected Alice as the topic for my thesis that I truly became passionate about it. So, no; in a way, I didn't choose the topic because I was passionate about it — I became passionate about it because of my thesis.
This answered another inquiry from my profes- sor: "When did you find out you were passionate about Alice in Wonderland?" Once I began the research process, I became more immersed in everything Won- derland. I read more than fifty books and articles about Lewis Carroll, about Alice, about other films, and I watched even more movies based on the stories. I read novels, comics, fan fiction, and lyrics, among other things. Each text I read added to my already enormous fascination with the stories and, of course, the author. All I could talk about was Alice; my friends constantly sent me Alice-related links to videos, blogs, articles, restaurants, hotels, and anything imaginable. I became known as "the Alice girl" in my department,
*5
and some professors even called me Alice. If some- one were to discuss Alice in a class or in any random conversation, they were careful about not misquoting or making erroneous references about the stories, for they knew I would probably correct them if they did. Writing a thesis about Alice became my Wonder- land, the place where I could escape to and be myself. Never in a million years would I have thought that a nonsense children's story would have so much mean- ing in my life. The mere thought of it makes me think that I may be just as mad as a hatter. But I cannot forget what the White Queen told Alice: "Why, some- times I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Writing my thesis helped me be- lieve in impossible things too. One of these things was that even if I am an adult with many responsibilities, I am still a child at heart, and there is nothing wrong with that. In Tim Burton's and the SyFy Network's versions, Alice became an adult, and because of this, her experiences in Wonderland became tasks rather than adventures; they became a burden rather than an opportunity to be free and be herself. Alice had forgotten the child version of herself; she had erased
her adventures from her memory, and she had been pulled into the abyss of adulthood.
The opening song for the 1951 Disney film adap- tation asks the following questions: Where is the land beyond the eye, that people cannot see, where can it be? ... Alice in Wonderland, where is the path to Wonderland? I believe the path to Wonderland lies in each person's ability and willingness to be a child, for it is only by freeing ourselves from the burdens of adulthood that we can look at the world with innocent eyes, and dis- cover that there is an adventure in everything, every day — -just as it happened with Alice, who was finally able to embrace Wonderland when she allowed her- self to be a child at heart. I think a lot of us, members of the LCSNA, have been able to find that child in our hearts, and we can be silly, mad as hatters, nonsensi- cal, and happy solving life's riddles. We can be em- braced by Lewis Carroll's wonderful creation by en- joying a book "for children" without feeling ashamed. So let's all continue to embrace the child in all of us, let's continue with the fun, and more importantly, let's continue exploring Wonderland, for there is still so much more to discover.
16
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Jg~
-iat
The Curious Door: Charles Hodgson s the Iffley Yew
ALISON GOPNIK fe'ALVY RAY SMITH
^^
;=*^r
Mfei Adventures in Wonderland lives because it speaks to the imagination of children ev- erywhere. But it is so potent partly because it was originally composed for and about one par- ticular child. Charles Dodgson turned the everyday, specific, banal events of Alice Liddell's life into magic and dreams — or rather, he revealed the magical and dreamlike character of each child's experience of the everyday, specific, and banal. Dinah, the treacle well, and the Sheep's shop are enchanted versions of specific, real cats and wells and shops, and the wet, bedraggled party of animals in the pool of tears was originally a wet, bedraggled party of spinster sisters and children caught in an English summer rainstorm. These transformations of the everyday into the ex- traordinary help make Wonderland so compelling.
We suggest another such link between the real life of Charles Dodgson and the Liddell sisters and what looks like a particularly surreal and unlikely detail in the book — the door in the tree. The door appears after Alice leaves the Mad Tea Party, and it leads her back to the hall:
"At any rate I'll never go there again!" said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!" Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. "That's very curious!" she thought. "But ev- erything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once." And in she went.
The passage is very similar in Alice's Adventures under Ground, Dodgson 's original version of the story, which included more specific references to actual events. However, it takes place just after Alice encoun- ters the pigeon, and it has one significant difference: the "door" is a "doorway."
"However, I've got to my right size again: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden — how is that to be done, I wonder?" Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a doorway leading right into it. "That's very curious!" she thought, "but every- thing's curious today: I may as well go in." And in she went.
The door in the tree is also the subject of a full- page illustration by Dodgson — one that was not re- produced by Tenniel in the later book (Fig. 1).
We suggest that this curious tree was based on a real tree, the Iffley Yew, a very old hollow tree with a four-foot opening in one side — a child-sized doorway, if not a door — growing in the churchyard in the village of Iffley, two miles down the Thames from Oxford.
We will establish the following:
1. The Iffley Yew was well known in the early nineteenth century, and Dodgson would almost certainly have read about it as a picturesque and historically significant local landmark.
2. Dodgson knew Iffley well, particularly the Church, and visited it often, particularly be- tween 1862 and 1864 when he was writing Alice's Adventures under Ground. He had several cleri- cal friends who lived there. He planned to take photographs there.
3. Dodgson went to Iffley with Alice Liddell and her sisters on at least two occasions, and possibly more.
4. There is a photograph of the Iffley Yew by the Oxford photographer Henry Taunt that we can date to between May 18, 1862, and March 8, 1866, a period roughly contemporaneous with the composition of Alice's Adventures under Ground. The photograph shows the opening in the tree clearly, and the tree bears a striking resemblance to Dodgson's illustration.
THE IFFLEY YEW
Iffley Church was, and is, famous as one of the most beautiful and best preserved Romanesque churches in England. It dates from the 1170s, with very few alterations since. It is particularly well known for its fantastical, grotesque, and very Carrollian carvings of real and mythical animals, including gryphons.1 In the churchyard there is an exceptionally large and old yew tree, currently some 25 feet in girth. The tree is hollow. Currently, the cavity has been partially filled with concrete, stones, and earth, but the east side still has an opening about three feet high and a foot off the ground. From the outside, the opening is now completely hidden by the branches that reach to the ground (Fig. 2).
17
Figure 2. The Iffley Church and Yew today (July 2011).
Figure 1. Dodgson's illustration for Alice's Adventures under Ground.
Figure 3. Illustration from Skelton's Antiquities of Oxfordshire, 1823.
The tree was rather different in the nineteenth century, however. Descriptions and pictures of the tree appear in many sources. It was described care- fully in John Loudon's standard Trees and Shrubs of Great Britain in 1838:
The Iffley Yew stands in Iffley churchyard, near Oxford, nearly opposite the south-east corner of the church, and between that and an ancient cross. This tree is supposed to be coeval with the church, which, it is believed, was built previously to the Norman conquest. The dimensions of the tree, kindly taken for us in September, 1836, by Mr. Baxter, were as follows: — Girt of the trunk, at 2 ft. from the ground, 20 ft., and at 4 ft. from the ground, where the branches begin, 17 ft. The trunk is now little more than a shell, and there is an opening on the east side of the tree which is 4 ft. high, and about 4 ft. in width; the cavity within is 7 ft. long, 4 ft. wide, and 4 ft. high in
the highest part. The height of the tree is 22 ft.; and there are about 20 principal branches, all of which, except two, are in a very vigor- ous and flourishing state. The diameter of the head is 25 ft. each way2
In The Gentleman's Magazine of 1804 there is a description of two bored travelers who "alternately thrust themselves into the tree," a description which fits the dimensions described in Loudon. :i The tree was also described and illustrated in Oxford guide- books such as The Oxford University and City Guide of 1818, ' Antiquities of Oxfordshire of 1823 (Fig. 3),5 and Memorials of Oxford of 1837,6 among others. Engrav- ings of it appeared in The Illustrated London News of 18457 and The Penny Illustrated News of 1850.s The de- scriptions emphasize both the great age of the tree and its picturesque appearance. It also appeared at length in the self-consciously "artistic" travel writ- ings of The Wanderings of a Pen and Pencil by Francis P. Palmer and Alfred Crowquill in 1846, which include
•■**
Figure 4. Illustration from The Art-Journal of June 1, 1857.
IFFLEY CHUKCII.
appealingly Victorian descriptions of both the Iffley cottages ("dainty bowers of delight" where "the syl- labubs in the open air were charming") and the Yew itself: "The roots of this surprising vegetable hero were probably strong in earth when Richard the Lion- hearted was beating down the Paynim chivalry in the Holy Land."9
Most significantly of all, for our purposes, the tree was both described and illustrated, with the opening prominently depicted, in The Art-Journal of June 1, 1857 (Fig. 4):
The church-yard contains an aged yew tree — so aged that no stretch of fancy is required to believe it was planted when the first stone of the sacred structure was laid.*
* It has been generally stated that yew-trees were planted near churches to supply bow-staves for archers, at a time when archery was much practised, and enforced by law. But the custom is now believed to be much older, and to be a relic of paganism; these trees being sacred to the dead from a very early period, and there- fore especially venerated by die Druids, were adopted by the Romans and Saxons; hence "the church was brought to the tree, and not the tree to die church" for the eminent botanist Decandolle notes that the yews at Fountains and Crowhurst are 1200 years old, while that at Fortingale, in Scotland, is believed to be 1400 years old.'"
This passage and the picture were part of a year- long serialization called "The Book of the Thames, from Its Rise to Its Fall" by the editor of the Journal, Samuel C. Hall, and his wife. The Art-Journal was the leading art magazine of its time and an early advo- cate of photography. We know that Dodgson read it, since some of his first photographs in 1856 were pho- tographs of pages from the Journal."
So the Yew, like the Church, was well known as a picturesque, historically significant, and romantically
(if not always entirely accurately) depicted ancient relic in Dodgson 's time.
DODGSON IN IFFLEY
Dodgson's diaries record two visits to Iffley in 1857.'- The diaries from April 1858 to April 1862 are missing. Eleven further visits are recorded in the period be- tween May 1862, when the diaries recommence, and November 1864, when Dodgson presented the fin- ished Alice's Adventures under Ground to Alice Liddell."
Dodgson had several friends and acquaintances who lived in Iffley between 1857 and 1864. They in- cluded William Henry Charsley; James Rumsey and his family; the "Perpetual Curate" of Iffley, Thomas Acton Warburton; and John Slatter and his family. Dodgson specifically records visiting and dining with the Charsleys, the Rumseys, and Warburton in Iffley in his diaries." Dodgson was also friendly with William Ranken, who succeeded Slatter as Vicar of Sandford- on-Thames in 1862 and, according to the diary, lived in lodgings in Sandford, a short way farther down the river from Iffley.15 John Slatter, Elizabeth Rumsey, and Thomas Warburton are all listed as living in Iffley in the 1861 census (with James Rumsey listed separately in Oxford at his college).16
Although he does not specifically record visiting him in Iffley in the extant diaries, Dodgson was par- ticularly close to John Slatter and his family. Slatter was born in Iffley and was Vicar of nearby Sandford- on-Thames from 1852 through 1861. '" He had a first in mathematics at Oxford, and was an amateur astronomer, meteorologist, and antiquarian, and he had a young daughter, Bessie. In the Letters, Dodgson records a visit from "some friends. . . the John Slatters" to see photographs on December 18, 1860, when the Slatters lived at Iffley (in fact, in "an awful breach of court etiquette" he uses this visit to excuse himself
!9
from sending the photographs to Prince Albert to view).18 He also photographed both John Slatter and Bessie in 1860 and photographed seven-year-old Bes- sie again (with a guinea pig) probably in 1861. 19 Slat- ter became Vicar at Streatley and moved there early in 1862, when Ranken succeeded him at Sandford. According to the diaries, Dodgson visited the Slatters at least four times at Streatley between 1 862 and 1 864, although they were now a train ride away.2" It seems very likely, then, that Dodgson also visited the Slatters at Iffley during the period of the missing diaries.
Dodgson also had close connections to Iffley Church. The diaries record that he attended services there three times. He also records visiting the Rec- tory three times and interacting with the Rev. Thomas Warburton, the Perpetual Curate and de facto Vicar, and his extended family of sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews. And he records assisting with the church school and playing croquet in the Rectory garden.21
At the time that Dodgson visited Iffley, Warbur- ton and Iffley Church were at the center of Barchester Towers-Mke religious and aesthetic controversies. Rev- erend Warburton himself is a figure straight out of Trollope, a man marked by irascibility and arrogance as well as energy and zeal. He was an enthusiast for both High Church theology and medieval architec- ture and history — he wrote a book called Rollo and His Race: Or Footsteps of the Normans — and he worked hard, in spite of substantial opposition, to return the church to what he thought of as its original state. He was responsible for restoring the ancient cross that stood direcdy in front of the Yew in 1857, and for adding a newly carved top to replace the original. (The unrestored cross can be seen in the Antiquities of Oxfordshire and The Art-Journal engravings (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4). He also removed a fifteenth-century per- pendicular window in the church in 1857, replacing it with a restoration of the original Romanesque oculus. He equipped it with vivid Victorian stained glass com- memorating the death of his brother. He also wanted to remove the fifteenth-century windows inside the church, but couldn't overcome the opposition from the architects and the community. ~
Dodgson (and Alice Liddell) were particularly close to another enthusiast for medieval architecture in general and the Iffley Church in particular — none other than Alice's father, Henry Liddell, himself. Lid- dell was both a vice-president and a frequent member of the governing committee of the Oxford Architec- tural Society, originally known as the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture. He continued as member through at least 1870. John Slat- ter was also a member. In 1841 Liddell presented a no- tably sensible and moderate paper to the society about the possible restoration of the Iffley Church, arguing for restoring the oculus but not the side windows. 2:(
It is hard for us now to recapture the intense Victorian enthusiasm for all things medieval — War- burton referred to the fifteenth-century windows as "Tudor blemishes" and even the moderate Henry Lid- dell startlingly argued for the removal of "Italian alter (sic) pieces and square sleeping-boxes and all the oth- er incongruities with which our Churches have been disfigured since the period called 'the Renaissance' when all true taste seems to have departed from us."24
Dodgson was no exception. He was an enthusiast for the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art, which also advocated a return to pre-Renaissance aesthetics, and was a personal friend of many of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. Of course, he also saw the comic side. "Jab- berwocky" began as a parody of obscure Anglo-Saxon poetry, and there are many references to Normans and Saxons in the Alice books. Alice thinks that the mouse might have come over with William the Con- queror, "For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened" — a description that might apply to the chroniclers of the Iffley Yew who combined Normans, Saxons, and Druids into a single hazy medieval past. But there was no doubt that Iffley Church and the Yew were part of that past, and Dodgson would surely have shared Warburton 's and Henry Liddell 's fascina- tion with their medieval character.
IFFLEY PHOTOGRAPHY
In his diaries, Dodgson records his intention to take photographs at Iffley on four separate occasions, though it's not clear whether he actually succeeded in doing so. The first record is a May 1857 entry made during the time that the Thames series was appear- ing in The Art-Journal: "I am thinking of going over someday to photograph the church there, and they undertake to borrow for me a room at the Rectory, which is at present uninhabited."25
In June of 1862 he records that he is planning to take photographs of the Rumseys and the Warbur- ton children, among others, in the Rectory, and in a later June entry he visits the Rectory and arranges to take his camera there on July 10.26 (By then Warbur- ton had restored the Rectory and moved in.) In fact, however, on July 10 he records taking photographs in Christ Church, so it seems unlikely that he also did so in Iffley. On the other hand, one surviving pic- ture from that time, 0785 in Dodgson 's photograph numbering, is a photograph of Mrs. Rumsey and her daughter Leila (short for Cornelia).27 The number- ing suggests that it was taken sometime in July, so it seems that it was either taken in Christ Church on July 10 or possibly taken in Iffley on a different day. Leila, according to British birth records, was born in 1857 in Iffley, and so was almost five years old injury 1862, which also fits her age in the picture.2829
20
Figure 5. Old photographs
of If/ley Church and the
Yew (English Heritage
Archives).
- --.—-:3>
5a. 1862-1866 *P
5b. 1870
* %dt^^M
On July 14, 1862, Dodgson again records that he had "settled to send my camera over" to Iffley on "Monday [July] the 20"', if nothing prevents" (though this was actually July 21). 30 But, again, it is not clear whether he succeeded in doing so. Finally, he also includes Augusta Warburton, the Rev. Warburton's niece — whom he had planned to photograph in the June 1862 entry — in a long list in the diary of children either already photographed or to be photographed, dated March 25, 1863." The list also includes Bessie Slatter and Cornelia Rumsey, as well as the Liddell sisters. No photograph of Augusta survives, however. So we cannot prove that Dodgson actually took pho- tographs in Iffley Rectory, but he certainly planned to do so and looked at Iffley with a photographic eye.
ALICE IN IFFLEY
So Dodgson knew Iffley and the Church well. But what about Alice? One of the first records of the re- commenced diaries reads
May 26, 1862
Went down the river with Southey, taking Ina, Alice, and Edith with us: we only went to Iffley. Even then it was hard work rowing up again, the stream is so strong.'2
This record takes place a little before the wet ex- pedition to Nuneham that inspired the pool of tears, on June 17, and the famous trip to Godstowwhen the story was first told, on July 4.:,:1 Wakeling notes that there were almost certainly earlier expeditions with Al- ice and her sisters on the river. In her reminiscences, Alice Liddell says that they took both full-day excur-
21
Figure 6. The 1862-1864
illustration and
corresponding detail from
the 1862-1866 photo.
sions, including dinner, to such places as Nuneham and Godstow, and shorter afternoon ones including only tea. Iffley would have been a good destination for a shorter trip.34
In May of 1863, when he was still working on the pictures for Alices Adventures under Ground, there are two diary records of Dodgson walking to "a little be- low Iffley" and "by Iffley" with the Liddell children.35 Again, it seems at least plausible that there were more such walks during the period of the missing diaries, when Dodgson saw the Liddell children frequently.
Finally, in her recollections of the wet trip to Nuneham — recorded, of course, many years later — Alice mistakenly recalled that the cottage where they took shelter was in Iffley. (It was actually in Sandford, and Dodgson and Duckworth walked to Iffley to get a fly to rescue the others.) This at least suggests that Iffley was familiar territory.36
Alice had turned ten on May 4, 1862, just before the boat trip to Iffley recorded in the diary. We don't know her exact height, of course, and, as the fictional Alice would point out, it was constandy changing in the period when Wonderland was conceived and writ- ten. But, by at least one estimate, the average height for eight-year-old British schoolgirls in 1908-1911 was 114.9 cm., or 3 ft. 9 in., while the average for twelve year olds was 135.2 cm., or 4 ft. 5 in.37 So it seems very likely that Alice would have been somewhere under four feet tall.
This also seems to be true of the fictional Alice. The Alice of the book is seven and a half years old in Through the Looking-Glass and presumably seven in
Alices Adventures in Wonderland. In Tenniel's illustra- tion of the door in the hall, in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, the still normal-sized Alice is just about three times taller than the 15-inch-high door behind the curtain in the hall, or a little below four feet. In- terestingly, Dodgson actually altered the height of the door from Alices Adventures under Ground to the final manuscript. In Alices Adventures under Ground, the door is 18 inches high and does not appear in the il- lustration. So presumably he changed it to make Alice the right height in the Tenniel drawing. We know that he was extremely concerned about small details of the illustrations, and in a book where height changes are so central, getting the "normal" Alice right would have been important.
This would make both the real and the fictional Alice just the right height to fit through the four-foot opening in the tree recorded by Loudon. Any child, let alone a particularly bright and imaginative one, would relish the idea of walking through an opening that was just about her size, into the middle of a tree.
THE TAUNT PHOTOGRAPH
One might wonder if any old hollow tree would look like the tree in Dodgson 's illustration. In fact, how- ever, even this very tree, 150 years later (see Fig. 2), doesn't look much like the illustration in Alice's Ad- ventures under Ground — the tree branches extend to the ground, and the hole has been partially blocked up. The illustration is also only vaguely like the (somewhat impressionistic) early nineteenth-century engravings. A tree is a living and changing organism,
22
however, so one would want to compare the illustra- tion to a contemporaneous photograph. Fortunately, a number of nineteenth-century photographs of the Iffley Yew can be found in the English Heritage Ar- chives.38 They include several glass negative plates taken by Henry Taunt, a well-known local Oxford commercial photographer. The earliest dated plate is from 1870 (see Fig. 5b), but there is another, undated plate which has to be even earlier since several grave- stones that occur in the 1870 picture are missing from it (see Fig. 5a) ,39
In fact, since this photograph is set in the church- yard, and, as a large glass negative, has excellent de- tail, it is possible to date it fairly precisely by examin- ing the gravestone inscriptions. Cross-checking with the Iffley Parish Burial Register and the surviving gravestones in the current churchyard provides even more information."' It's immediately apparent that there is a cross dated October 1859 in the foreground of both pictures (circled in Fig. 5) and a stone dated October 1866 immediately behind it in the 1870 pic- ture that is absent from the earlier one (enclosed in a rectangle in Fig. 5). Both dates can be confirmed in the Burial Register. So the photograph must date from the period between 1859 and 1866.
Closer examination shows that the gravestone in front of the restored ancient cross in the first picture has been replaced by a different stone in the 1870 shot (enclosed in a rectangle in Fig. 5). The new stone, which can be read in close-up, still exists in a stack at the side of the churchyard and commemo- rates Martha Luff, who died in 1866 and — again, ac- cording to the Iffley Parish Burial Register — was bur- ied March 8, 1866. Even more detailed inspection of the photographs shows a small cross off to one side near the church in both the earlier and later shot (circled in Fig. 5). This cross, though broken, is still in the same place and commemorates Eliza Hearne, who died in 1862 and was buried May 18. This means that we can date the earlier photograph to the pe- riod between May 18, 1862, and March 8, 1866, just the time when Wonderland was being written. (Cross- checking the Burial Register and the record of extant inscriptions shows that this is as precise a date as we are able to get.)"
Fig. 6 shows the detail from the 1862-1866 pho- tograph that corresponds to the illustration. Allowing for the Pre-Raphaelite curves that Dodgson applied to the branches, and a slight change of angle, they are strikingly similar. In a later photograph from 1885,'- as now, the hole is blocked up with stones, but it is open in both the 1862-1866 and 1870 photographs, and, just as Loudon described it, extends to the same height as the first branches.
In particular, if we take the proportions given in Loudon's book, the hole in the tree is four feet tall and equivalently wide, extending from the ground to
the point where the branches start. In the illustration, Alice is just under the height of both the tree branch- es and the door.
CONCLUSION
So what do we know with some certainty, and what can we infer? We can be fairly certain that Dodg- son knew about the Iffley Yew, that he visited Iffley twice in 1857 and eleven times between 1862 and 1864, that he had friends, including child-friends, in Iffley, that he attended services at the church three times, and that he also visited the Rectory three times. We can also be fairly certain that he intended to take photographs in Iffley Rectory and that he visited If- fley with the Liddell sisters twice. We can be fairly cer- tain that, in the 1860s, the tree had a hole that could be entered, that the hole was about four feet high by four feet wide at maximum extension, and that the tree strongly resembled Dodgson's illustration. It is definitely not certain but is highly plausible that there were other unrecorded visits to Iffley during the pe- riod of the missing diaries between 1858 and 1862.
Putting this all together leads to what is undoubt- edly an inference, but surely not a wild or implausible inference. It is an inference that fits everything we know about Dodgson's genius — both his genius with children and his literary genius — and about the gen- eral genius of children themselves. The inference is that the children Dodgson knew, including the Lid- dell sisters, and Alice in particular, would have en- joyed the special imaginative child pleasure of find- ing a child-sized, unlikely hiding place (a shed, a treehouse, an attic, a garden nook). An ancient tree with a four-foot doorway would certainly be seen as curious and enchanting by every child we know. The further inference is that Dodgson would have delight- edly joined in that imaginative pleasure. And the still further inference is that Dodgson — though perhaps here we should say Carroll — would have transformed that everyday bit of childish imaginative play into a memorably strange and curious door, in this most memorably strange and curious of books.
1 Sherwood, Jennifer, and Nikolaus Pevsner (1974). The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 658-662.
2 Loudon, John Claudius (1838). Arboretum et Fructicetum Britannicum; or, The Trees and Shrubs of Britain. London: J. C. Loudon, vol. 4, p. 2076.
1 Urban, Mr. (1804). "Stones in an Old Yew— The
Kingsland Doctress," The Gentleman's Magazine. London:
Nov., vol. 96, p. 995. 1 Iffley (1818). The Oxford University and City Guide [&c] ; To
which is added, a guide to Blenheim, Nuneham [&c.]. Oxford:
p. 193. :> Skelton, Joseph ( 1823) . Engraved Illustrations of the
Principal Antiquities of Oxfordshire. Oxford: J. Skelton,
Billington Hundred, p. 8.
23
6 Ingram, James (1837). Memorials of Oxford. Oxford: John Henry Parker, vol. 3, Iffley, p. 9.
7 Iffley Church ( 1 845 ) . The Illustrated London News, Oct. 25, p. 261.
* Camera Sketches (1850). The Penny Illustrated News,
Jan. 26, vol. 1, no. 14, p. 112. 9 Palmer, Francis Paul, and Alfred Crowquill (1846). The Wanderings of a Pen and Pencil. London: Jeremiah How, p. 288.
10 Hall, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Carter (1857) . "The Book of the Thames, from Its Rise to Its Fall," part 6, The Art- Journal London: June 1, vol. 3, p. 190.
" Wakeling, Edward (2011). Charles Dodgson Photographic Database, <www.lewiscarroll-site.com>, nos. 0096-0099.
12 Wakeling, Edward (ed.) (1995). Lewis Carroll's Diaries: The Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Vol. 3: January 1857-58. Luton, Beds.: The Lewis Carroll Society, pp. 48-49, 54. [Henceforth referenced as Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 3.]
IS Wakeling, Edward (ed.) (1997) . Lewis Carroll's Diaries: The Private Journals of Charles Lutividge Dodgson, Vol. 4: May 1862 to September 1864. Luton, Beds.: The Lewis Carroll Society, pp. 69, 74, 75-78, 81-82, 87, 88, 161, 176, 196, 200, 260. [Henceforth referenced as Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4.]
1 ' Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 3, pp. 48-49, 54; Vol. 4, pp. 69, 74, 75-78, 87, 161, 176, 260.
15 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 74, 81-82, 106.
"' England census, 1861, Iffley Parish, Oxfordshire, Iffley Turn, registration district Headington, sub-registration district St. Clement, class RG9, piece 890, folio 104, p. 2, GSU roll 542717, lists at no. 9 John Slatter, 44, clergyman born in Iffley, wife Elizabeth, 49, daughter Elizabeth A., 7, and mother Ann, 75, and lists at no. 6 Elizabedi Romsey (sic), 35, a clergyman's wife, son John T. M., 6, daughters Elizabeth F. C, 3, and Mary H., 1; England census, 1861, Iffley Parish, Oxfordshire, Iffley village, reg. district Headington, sub-reg. district St. Clement class RG9, piece 890, folio 112, p. 17, GSU r. 542717, lists at no. 88 Acton Warburton, 47, Perpetual Curate of Iffley, and mother Anna, 77; England census, 1861, St. Mary the Virgin Parish, Oxfordshire, St. Mary Hall, reg. district Oxford, sub-reg. district Oxford, class RG9, piece 893, folio 73, p. 34, GSU r. 542717, lists at no. 181 James Rumsey, 37, a clergyman. The 1861 census was enumerated Apr. 7, 1861, widi information stated as of that date. All images of the census online at <Ancestry.com>.
17 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, p. 72, in a note by Wakeling; John Slatter signed the Sandford Parish Register from July 4, 1852, through December 15, 1861, with W. H. Ranken succeeding him (Family History Library, Salt Lake City, microfilm 952330).
18 Cohen, M. (ed.) (1979). The Utters of Lewis Carroll. London: Macmillan, p. 46.
19 Wakeling, Edward (2011). Charles Dodgson Photographic Database, <www.lewiscarroll-site.com>, nos. 0582, 0583, 0736, estimates 1862.
211 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 102, 135, 185, 295; Slatter signed the Streatley Parish Register from January 9, 1862, to March 28, 1880 (Family Historv Library, Salt Lake City, microfilm 1040688).
21 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 3, p. 54, Vol. 4, pp.
74,76-78,87, 103, 176. -'-' Tyack, Geoffrey (2003) . "The Restoration of Iffley Parish
Church," Oxoniensia, vol. 68, pp. 114—130. 2:1 Proceedings of the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of
Gothic Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University, pp. 6, 10,
12, 18,25,70.
24 Tyack, Geoffrey (2003) . "The Restoration of Iffley Parish Church," Oxoniensia, vol. 68, pp. 114—130.
25 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 3, p. 54.
211 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 76-78, 87.
27 Wakeling, Edward (2011). Charles Dodgson Photographic
Database, <www.lewiscarroll-site.com>, no. 0785. ' Birth certificate, General Register Office, registration district Heading Union, sub-district St. Clement, Elizabeth Frances Cornelia, born Aug. 22, 1857, Iffley, Oxfordshire, father James Rumsey, clergyman, mother Eliza Rumsey formerly Medlycoth [sic, should be Medlycott], registered Sept. 28, 1857.
29 Taylor, Roger, and Edward Wakeling (2003) . Lewis Carroll- Photographer. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
90 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, p. 103. In a note, Wakeling states that Dodgson discovered on July 22 that several of his dates, including this one, were off by one, and that Dodgson then corrected them; the 20th here was corrected to the 21st.
sl Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 177-181.
32 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, p. 69, with a note by Wakeling.
93 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 81-82, 94-95.
M Cohen, Morton (ed.) (1989). Interviews and Recollections: Lewis Carroll pp. 84-86.
85 Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 196, 200.
36 Cohen, Morton (ed.) (1989) . Interviews and Recollections: Lewis Carroll p. 86.
S7 Hatton, Timothy J., and Richard M. Martin (2009).
"Fertility Decline and the Heights of Children in Britain, 1886-1938," IZA Discussion Papers 4306, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
:w English Heritage Archives, <www.englishheritagearchives. org.uk>, reference no. BB57/01327, dated 1860-1922, and CC54/00378, dated 1870. Examining the stones in the 1870 photograph confirms the date.
,9 The gravestones marked with rectangles in the 1870 photograph were used to establish an upper bound on the date of the earlier photograph, and those marked with ovals the lower bound. The tall cross next to the Yew was restored in 1857 (cf. Fig. 3 and Fig. 4).
10 Oxfordshire Parish Register Transcripts, Headington Reg. District, Vol. 1, Iffley Burials, 1572-1986, Oxfordshire Family History Society, compact disc OXF-HED01.
11 Monumental Inscription Transcript, Iffley, St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church, Oxfordshire Family History Society, compact disc OXF-MMFF.
12 English Heritage Archives, <www.englishheritagearchives. org.uk>, reference no. CC54/00379 dated 1885. Examining the gravestones in the photograph confirms the date.
24
-^
~^s
^
The Huntinc? of Alice in SeV<hi Pits
ADRIANA PELIANO
^*
*~
1. RIVER
Alice was raised on a ship of dreams, in a liquid look- ing-glass, following the currents of desire, imagina- tion, and curiosity. She was born on a river, with its switchbacks and reflections, following and fighting the flow, in the geometry of laughter and strange par- adoxes. We do not read a book; we dive into it. It surrounds us, constantly.1 Sitting on the bank, Alice would ask herself: and luhat is the use of a book without pictures and conversations? Alice has been perhaps the most illus- trated book of all time. This shows that we continue to answer the question that Alice did not ask: and what is the use of a book with pictures and conversations?
A river child, Alice moves amongst mazes where one is lost and found in mysterious rhythms. The great paradox running through Alice's adventures, according to Deleuze,2 is the loss of her own name, her infinite identity, her eternal becoming. When the caterpillar asks, Who are you? Alice does not know the answer. / know who I was . . . but I think I must have been changed several times since then. In her typically paradox- ical manner, Alice says no, but also says yes: I know who I am; the transformation continues. Like Alice, when it seems we know who we are, we're already someone else, and what we think we are, is what we once were. And the world that we know is changing every second. The girl, born into the River of Heracli- tus, knows that being and nonbeing are in constant conversation, in an eternal cycle that is being created at all times.
When Alice says that she only knows who she was, she is saying that we are always in motion. And when she was drawn by John Tenniel in Victorian England, a tradition of Alices was born that would follow in this path.:i But
Alice is no longer the Victorian Al- j/& *jj; ice, instead she is a living kaleido- scope of all of the possibilities. ' How many artists were in fact driven by the need to overcome the stereotypical imagery of the girl and her amazing world, and by the quest for new adventures in expression? Instead of the ques- tion "Who is Alice?" there are now paths leading to that which Alice might come to be. . . .
Adriana
As the twentieth century progressed, the concept of illustration underwent profound transformations, in dialogue with the radical changes happening in the visual arts. Artists broke down the barriers between the outside world and the experiences of the mind, questioning the idea of a mimetic approach to illus- tration. The transformations in the universe of the arts and counterculture were re-creating Alice's expe- riences in the melee of her dream world and wonder- land. At the end of that century, Alice's looking-glass shattered into a million pieces, spreading within the collective imagination new meta-Alices in a nonsensi- cal, magical hourglass of alicinations.
The artists and illustrators were driven to discov- er or invent new relationships between text and pic- tures. The identity of the subject was subverted by the allure of the unknown and inexplicable. Rather than repeat, illustrators started to provoke and transgress. They questioned the classic idea that art should imi- tate or interpret an exterior reality. They also began to seek out subversion, paradox, and experimenta- tion.5 The present time is filled with otherness and difference. Intertextual readings, metalanguage, mul- tiple assemblies, nonlinear narratives. Abracadabra!
Since the beginning of the last century, each de- cade, through its different visions and styles, created its own Alices: art nouveau, art deco, sur- realist, pop, psychedelic, futuristic, Gothic, naive, ethnic, dark, steampunk, pop surrealist.1' Alice is, by turns, a sweet and ingenuous girl, a questioning feminist, a perverted child, a mad and bloody assassin, a drugged adult, seeker of worlds beyond conscious thought, a delirious psychedelicist, or an armor-clad and shielded warrior, always multiple and mutating.
Alice moves beyond illustration into art, into movies, into fashion, into animation, into games, into com- ics, into the mix that now reigns and requires other comprehensions. And they all coexist in our alicinatory times of mixtures and count- less seams and transitions through multiple networks. I do not know of another girl with so many faces, a traveler from an imaginary
Peliano
25
Elena Kalis
Polixeni Papapetrou
world, bringing with her the paradoxes that defy our senses and our common sense. The Alice books do not fit into any mold or explanation, instead spreading a worldwide net of creative possibilities.
We live in an image culture of collage and montage, of velocity and voraciousness: one image quickly devours an- other, transforming into another image, ready to be devoured, Norval Baitello explains. Images seduce and absorb us, but with the loss of our ability to create consistent connections and sensible relations, the devouring process is reversed: We go from indiscriminately de- vouring images to being indiscriminately devoured by them. We lose ourselves in labyrinthine deserts, and instead of always seeing the otherness in that which
is the same, different Alices upon each reading, we find ourselves mired in the sad adventure of always seeing sameness in the other; we see nothing new in the thousands of Alices in circulation. Decipher me or I will devour you.7
The story of Alice is already so well known that it becomes fragmented, repeated, displaced, decon- structed, gnawed upon by artists from everywhere, in every way. With her serpentine neck, Alice navigates among hybrid identities, blends, contrasts, oddities, merchandise, gato por lebre,s and senselessness that everybody buys and believes without understanding why. She sets out for the new and looks back to rein- vent herself all over again. This is Alice. Alice is all of them and none of them, and she opens herself up like the largest kaleidoscope ever seen. Good-bye, feet!
Alice strolls along the margins and between the lines; she crosses borders, a traveler through the un- known, but also through stock phrases, cliches, the commonplace, distortions and cheap simplifications that insist on impoverishing life and art. As we travel through Alice's landscapes, we also travel through our own interior landscapes. New Alices learn that a path has not been set; rather, it opens as one goes forward.51
Alice is an invitation to duplicity (for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people), multi- plicity {she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them), becoming (/ know who I was, but I think I must have been changed several times since then), and the loss of one's own name ( This must be the wood ivhere things have no names. I wonder what'll become of MY name when I go in?). We must create new forms of expression to give way to new Alices more sensitive to these subtle and free becomings . . .
McLuhan understood that Lewis Carroll peered into the looking-glass and saw the time and space of the electronic man. Before Einstein, Carroll had al- ready penetrated the ultrasophisticated universe of relativity. Every moment in Alice has its own time and space. And the fragmentation of time into a multi- tude of small fractions of the present joins with the fragmentation of space into a multicolored, trans- figured kaleidoscope.10 Pieces of Alices from around the world give themselves over to the tasks of living, eating, drinking; they become involved in an endless party and its infinite possibilities.
Why continue living as Alice seated at the table set for tea, sullen and silent, as depicted by Tenniel? What we now seek is a way to remain time's friends (as the Hatter suggests) and to free ourselves from the senseless and repetitive rituals in which the guests at the tea party find themselves trapped. It is an invita- tion to new Alices — nomadic, mutating Alices, mul- tiple and simultaneous. Marcel Duchamp was "con- vinced that, like Alice in Wonderland, [tomorrow's
26
artists] will be led to pass through the looking-glass of the retina, to reach a more profound expression."11
2. UNDERGROUND
In Carroll's own illustrations from the Under Ground manuscript, Alice is spontaneous and spiritual, but also anguished and melancholic, close to the ideal- ized image of the artist's soul. She echoes romantic myths of the Pre-Raphaelites and their languid femi- nine figures, with oblique gazes and overflowing locks that would enchant the surrealists. She seems closer to a magical world than a logical one. At the same time, we glimpse hybrid and mythamorphic creatures in the book that invoke the grotesque beings of Hi- eronymus Bosch. Are these drawings not among the precursors of the surrealist bestiaries, a mix of dream worlds and fabulous monsters?
But when the expanded work was published in London, it was illustrated by John Tenniel, a famous illustrator from the Victorian periodical Punch. A commonly held belief remains that rarely was an author as well served by an illustrator as was Lewis Carroll by John Tenniel, even though the work has been illustrated subsequently by thousands of artists throughout the world.
We still confuse the images and the text, which together seem to tell the same story. We often lose sight of whether the images are in fact faithful to the text or whether we create, from them, a new text. Is fi- delity possible among images and texts of these Alices} Does Tenniel's Alice remain the most perfect illustra- tion of the work for the contemporary eye?
Who passively defies the Queen, with her arms crossed? Who confronts a mad cat, in search of new directions, with her hands behind her back?
If I empathetically project myself onto Tenniel's Alices, I feel like a tamed and contained Victorian girl who would not dirty her dress, would not throw her- self into the well, would not unfold herself into a ser- pent to discover its dangers, would not think of eating bats. (These Alices, who are in the text, do not appear in Tenniel's pictures.) Tenniel's Alice doesn't change, and awakens at the end of the book essentially the same. Really?
Alice is not transformed; Alice is transformation. How many adventures might she still experience, how many paths would she choose, how many Alices might still come into being? If life is a dream, Alice is unable to wake up; instead, she aiuakens. I am talking not only about what was written, but also about understand- ing that we ourselves are different with every reading, and that new Alices are born within us. Alice extends beyond the borders of the book and will live a multi- tude of adventures among constellations of dreams, thoughts, and emotions.
Tenniel's Alice sits sulking at the table where tea is served, without free will. Similarly, all those who
insist on reproducing the commonplace formulas re- main trapped in a repetitive tea-time ritual. Many of today's Alices unfold in new manners of expression and pictures, awakening in different arts, taking on a life of their own in a multitude of cultures. Consider- ing these friends from modern times, what Alices are we capable of?
Through readings and re-readings, I have select- ed artists in seven groups, in which I seek out:
Enigmatic Alices that destabilize the common- place and suggest new readings: Alain Gauthier,12 Dusan Kallay,13 Jonathan Miller,14 Martin Ba- rooshian,13 Nicole Claveloux,16 and Unsuk Chin.17
Metalinguistic Alices that reflect on language and expression and challenge the standards of representational art: Abelardo Morell,18 Anthony Browne,19 Catherine Anne Hiley,20John Vernon Lord,21 Ralph Steadman,22 and Suzy Lee.23
Conceptual Alices that inhabit labyrinths and paradoxes: Randy Greif,24 Iassen Ghiuselev,25 Julia Gukova,26 Luiz Zerbini,27 Oleg Lipchenko,28 and Sergey Tyukanov.29
Alices that cross intertextual borders and visit characters from other stories: John Rae, Dorothy Furness, and Edward Bloomfield.30
Alices of metamorphic bodies challenging hybrid identities and erotic dreams: Arlindo Daibert,31 Kuniyoshi Kaneko,32 Nicoletta Cec- coli,33 Tania Ianovskaia,34 Tanya Miller,35 and Vince Collins.36
Alices that journey through the world of dreams and the marvelous, proposing magical games: DeLoss McGraw,37 Elena Kalis,38 Kokusyoku Sum- ire,39 Maggie Taylor,40 Phoebe in Wonderland,^ and Alice-themed tea houses in Tokyo.
Some Alices that journey through leftover night- mares and challenge the frontiers between the mind and the unconscious: American McGee,42 Anna Gaskell,43 Camille Rose Garcia,44 Alice in the Undenuorld (Dark Marchen Show),45 Trevor Brown,46 and Jan Svankmajer.47
Alice is Alices is Alice.
3. MARVELOUS
Let us now journey through time with Alice herself as our guide on her adventures in being depicted by artists other than Tenniel.
Alice became lost in imaginary labyrinths until she arrived at the Gradiva art gallery, created by An- dre Breton in 1937. She saw the name Alice above the door, among other surrealist muses. She then read a passage from the gallery's pamphlet:
From the book of children 's images to the book of po- etic images.™
27
Salvador Dali
Surrealism had transported the Victorian girl to the book of poetic images. That was when she saw a grin hovering in the air that said Alice's adventures down the rabbit hole or through the looking-glass encourage us to seek out other cracks leading to the marvelous.49
Lewis Carroll left the doorway to our dreams open a crack. Alice went through it and found herself in a labyrinth of mirrors, an endless game, projections of herself created by surrealist artists. Surrealist muse, sphinx, femme enfant, Alice unfolds into multiple vi- sions of a modern myth. She enters portals to the unknown, plumbing the depths of the unconscious, rites of passage; the revelation of a sibylline and ar- chaic female, she becomes mixed with landscapes of a world in ruins, in the echoes and phantasms of the nightmares of war and of the dawning of a new world.
Carroll was broadly shared by the surrealists. He was read, and often invoked, by Paul Eluard, Gisele and Mario Prassinos, Guy Levis Mano, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington, Henri Pari- sot, Frederic Delanglade, Henri Toyen, Rene Mag- ritte, and Salvador Dali, among others. Max Ernst would illustrate some of his words, and confess that he was his second favorite writer after Lautreamont.50
Continuing her journey, Alice entered a portal and was taken aback by a series of prints and illustra- tions by Salvador Dali that depicted her adventures in Wonderland (Maecenas, 1969). She became a myste- rious figure jumping rope through a landscape filled with Dali's obsessions, such as the melting clocks of the Persistence of Memory series. The clock became the Hatter's table, set for tea, with time madly stopped at six in the afternoon. If the clocks reveal the me-
chanics of measuring linear time, the melting clocks refer to relative time and the universes of memory and pleasure.
Dali simulated delirium, speculating on the pro- priety of the uninterrupted becoming of every object upon which he carried out his paranoid activity. Dali's counterfeit paranoia, the "paranoiac-critical meth- od," allowed him to reorder the world according to his inner obsessions. The limits between the real and the imagined became ambiguous. And his paintings began to represent a space in which everything that can be seen is potentially something else. Wonder, dreams, and the unconscious serve as the stages for metamorphoses, where the objects, symbols of irra- tional desires, are subjected to sudden mutations, an uninterrupted becoming. Clocks, mushrooms, cater- pillars, butterflies, cards, not letters — these shapes are constantly being diluted, blending and transform- ing. Wanderer in a dream world, Alice is stunned to discover that everything is in a constant creative flux.
The constant presence of Alice's shadow in all of Dali's images refers to the Romantic dilemma of the double identity, suggesting a loss of bodily iden- tity. In Dali, Alice was a faceless silhouette, a mirror of herself in shadow and reflection. Surrealist Alices are bodies in metamorphosis and becoming, in a space of dreams and wonder. Dali's Alice gives way to the ghostly and kaleidoscopic presence of a multitude of double Alices, nameless in the contemporary imagina- tion. Dali's Alice opens doors to new Alices, who ask new questions of the smile in the air — without Dali.
4. FABULOUS MONSTERS
Alice went to visit the Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer, who illustrated the two Alice books in two rare and strange Japanese editions.'1 His drawings went be- yond the limits of conventional illustrations, creating unexpected relationships between pictures and con- versations. They are collages that reinvent the world imagined by Lewis Carroll, proposing new mysteries and paradoxes along a surrealist journey.
Metamorphosis in surrealism became a violent and animalistic need, straining the limits of human nature. Life is a dream. The surrealist monsters showed Alice that subjectivity was not that safe and stable place that she had been made to believe. Al- ice found herself inserted into an imaginary jungle of sphinxes and chimeras, among collages with multiple identities that emerged from subterranean, strange, and archaic worlds. The drawings were mounted and dismounted, metamorphosing between images of bi- ology and botany, dolls, Victorian illustrations, and sex symbols — double, multiple becomings.
In the "Jabberwocky"'s portmanteau words, there was a bestiary of beings such as tones and mome raths. Word collages were turned by Svankmajer into mon- ster collages, hybrid and enigmatic beings. Alice's
28
body was unstable and mutating, a puzzle without any right answer. Alice is a portmanteau of impossi- bilities. When the caterpillar asks Alice, Who are you?, Svankmajer's Alice is a drawing, a doll, a mushroom, lace, texture, pulse. The caterpillar and Alice meet with a vital elan, filled with the power of becoming.
Alice continued along and watched fragments of Svankmajer's experimental animated film that re- vealed unsuspected dimensions of herself. Much of the animation was created through an explosive mix- ture of stop motion and a wide variety of surreal ob- jects and hybrid, bizarre bodies. The characters might be played by machines, socks, clay, antique dolls and toys, meat, and even skeletons and the remains of bodies used in taxidermy experiments. The settings were ruins: decadent, subterranean landscapes, trans- formed into a somber and dissolute atmosphere.
Svankmajer adapted Carroll's story according to a personal dialogue with the dream world and his own childhood: a world inhabited by desires, latent sexual- ity, fears, anxieties, mysteries and obsessions. We are also confronted with our own childhood, our own Al- ices, fears, and shadows: inner alchemies. Each time we watch the film, we dream anew and Alice becomes a different one, among silences and whispers. I am reminded of the letter Paulo Mendes Campos gave to his daughter, Maria de Graca, when she turned fif- teen and received Alice as a present: This book is crazy, Maria, the meaning is inside of you.52
5. MERCHANDISE
Alice looked at her reflection in the water of the river, and it transformed into the silly, naive girl in a blue apron known by many, for many years, as the "real" Alice. Her story, recreated in a cartoon by Walt Disney's dream factory, would become powerful, di- luting the collective imagination, and stunting the metamorphoses of the girl who was constantly in transformation. Inspired by Tenniel's original illus- trations, this Alice would turn into the new ultimate icon, imposing for a long time a fixed and hegemonic public identity on the girl of many faces.
In the cartoon, Alice laments the fact that non- sense has been converted into moral lessons and good behavior. Like Walt Disney's princesses, the cartoon Alice is a passive and defenseless young woman facing a crazy, senseless world. Wonderland showed insanity to her so that she might desire sanity even more. It showed misfits, so that she might want to fit in. The characters showed her how the system worked, so that she could learn to integrate herself into it, toe the line, and assume her role in society.
Alice realized that Disney's cartoon simultane- ously brought her story to the world and hid her criti- cal and subversive potential. But at the same time, Disney's movie became a countercultural and psyche- delic icon in the 1960s as an ode to surrealism, insan-
ity, and creativity. Alice was curious to see how each work remained open to multiple, contradictory, and oftentimes paradoxical readings.
Alice discovered that many years later, at the start of the twenty-first century, Disney would produce an- other film about her, this time directed by a dark and imaginative director named Tim Burton. In this film, after many years, Alice returns to "Underland" in or- der to defeat the terrible dragon, the Jabberwocky (sic), as had been foreseen in a prophecy. Everyone asks her: Are you the real Alice?
She decides that she is not. In this movie, the nonsense is contained within reductionist formulas of a hero's journey. Alice is expected to become a warrior, to defeat and destroy the enemy in a Mani- chean world, to kill the dragon in order to awaken and assume her colonizing role in England's world domination. Alice takes over her father's project of conquering China.
The real me, Alice thought, is not a warrior, but an explorer. She does not kill the enemy, but learns through him. She does not want to take over the world, but instead comes to know herself. For her, Wonderland is not a batdefield, but a voyage, a game, a garden, and an adventure. That is why this movie is so unbearable, Alice thought. Because it shows the nightmare and the insanity that we now inhabit.
Once more, thanks to Tim Burton and Disney, with their considerable investment in promoting the film, Alice's presence in the collective imagina- tion was strengthened in an unprecedented manner. This is not only because of what the film shows, but
Jan Svankmajer
29
Kokusyoku Sumire
because of what it stimulates. Even with the insistent repetition of symbols of consumption, possibilities for new becomings and friendships are reborn over time. Countless creative and existentialist possibilities might arise from among both those pleased and dis- pleased with the film. The film offered them a chance to reread the book, to discover other images, other means of expression, other voyages; to produce, to create, to feel, to discover, and ultimately dialogue with and embark on an adventure, each in his or her own way, in this exciting world that still challenges us to take the plunge.
6. ARISU
The first time I read Alice, I imagined myself falling down with her until we reached the other side of the world, where people lived upside down. For a child in Brazil, this meant Japan. Many years later, I find that Japan is home to some of the most stimulating Alices alive today, in ordinary life in the city of Tokyo, shar- ing dreams, creating new worlds. Girls and boys who are children and adults at the same time dress as Vic- torian dolls, reinventing John Tenniel's illustrations, among other passions and pursuits. With gestures, mannerisms, aprons, lace, socks, ties, and ruffles, Al- ice is becoming a new way of living the countercul- ture in alicinatory neighborhoods such as Harajuku, Shinjuku, and Akihabara, places where otherness and altered-ness are celebrated, embracing the wonder within the contemporary cartography, journeying through time and the invention of oneself.
The birth of the Gosu-rori (Gothic Lolita) culture coincided with the translation of Fushigi no kuni no arisu by Sumiko Yagawa, as Sean Somers showed me in his thought-provoking article "Arisu in harajuku."'
She is my white rabbit, leading me to this surprising, and in large part misunderstood, reality. Yagawa stim- ulated the blooming of a counterculture that frees the imagination from repressive and repetitive social routines, opening the possibility of new friendships with time.
Wonderland (Fushigi) reveals an atmosphere of sensations, including charm and wonder, but also mystery, strangeness, and fear. Fushigi no kuni no arisu was translated in order to penetrate the existential needs of a generation, particularly the marginalized and outcast youth, who could, in this way, face mal- aise, depression, violence, and rejection through the wonder manifested in everyday life.
Fushigi is not an inducement of daydreams or escapism, Somers points out, but a creative therapy and an "alchemy of metamorphoses," a subversion of the standards for women, breaking down barriers be- tween ugly and beautiful, sweet and perverse, violent and delicate. Lolitas seek to prolong their childhood and question dominant culture in a childish manner and a dollish pose, in a game of being and nonbeing that crosses the line between art and life. Do Hello Kitties eat bats? Do bats eat Hello Kitties?
Yet, it is important to keep in mind that the prac- tice of wandering metamorphosis is now part of the logic of contemporary fashion. The creation and ex- pression of oneself as an exercise in creativity has now become a marketing gimmick. We live in a culture of "differences" that combines alleged creativity with a desire to be unique, but only according to static for- mulas of existence. As Cristiane Mesquita points out: "Clothing serves as a means of expression in an ex- istential landscape. But fashion also offers the mar- ket ephemeral and easily substituted identities." How can one be distinguished from the other? Alice is our challenge.51
Alice is able to disturb, to intrigue, to destabilize. She puts us in contact with uncertainty, unpredict- ability, turbulence, the untamed. Breaking with hege- monic models of existence, the new Alices must in- vent universes by paying attention to their own inner landscapes. Alices give themselves over to existence and say: I am a question.55
7. FRINGE
7, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland, stated Japanese pop artist Yayoi Kusama, who since the 1950s has alicinated psychedelic worlds. In paintings, col- lages, poems, daring acts, sculptures, fashions, weird- ness, and surprising installations, she shares patterns, repetitions, obsessions, and visions of the infinite.
Kusama was hospitalized for years for mental disorders, and her works reflect her challenging per- ception of reality, where the boundaries between the body, the self, and the environment mix and mingle in proliferations of repetitive dots that pulse and vi-
3°
brate with the cosmos. We're all mad here . . . otherwise you ivouldn't have come, said the Cheshire Cat. Kusa- ma plays with mirrors and kaleidoscopes to produce bright patterns with stunning effects, incorporating an almost hallucinatory vision of reality, in an experi- ence that is at once sensory and spiritual.
In the 1960s, the artist went to New York, where she carried out a series of political performances, under the philosophy "Love forever," promoting a reaction against the Vietnam War and all authoritar- ian, repressive, and conservative powers. These body paintings and orgiastic choreographies were per- formed before the sculpture of Alice in Central Park, in 1968. For Kusama, Alice was the grandmother of the hippies, and she became Alice, a year after Grace Slick sang "White Rabbit" with the Jefferson Airplane.
Kusama arrived in Central Park as the Hatter, with her nude dancers, inviting everyone to drink the tea that was being served under the magic mush- room. Red, green, and yellow dots could represent the earth, the sun, or the moon, according to Kusama. She painted little circles on the bodies of those pres- ent, so that people would divest themselves of their outlines to return "to the nature of the universe." From a criticism of the repressive powers symbolized by the social routines of Alice's teatime, Kusama has moved towards friendship with time, crossing bound- aries between bodies and cosmic rhythms, diluting the boundaries of the self.
And if Alice were not in the dress, but in its folds? If she were not in the blue material, but in the shadow and the light of a multicolor prism? If she were not in the hair, but in the rumors of its movement? Not in the apron, but in the traces of an intimate encounter? Not in the shoes, but in the steps into the unknown and the uncertainty about which path to take? Not in the pictures, but in the conversations? Not in the conversations, but in the question marks? Not in the words, but in the pauses that breathe between them? Not in the behavior, but in the beating of the heart? Not in a face, but in a dream? Not in a being, but in the becoming?
The author wishes to thank Mark Bursteinfor his generous collaboration; Isabelle Nieres-Chevrel and Mark Richards for kindly sharing research material.
1 Manganelli, Giorgio. Pinoquio: um liwro paralelo (Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002), 116. 2 Deleuze, Gilles. A logica do sentido (Sao Paulo: Editora perspectiva, 1974).
3 Ovenden, Graham, and John Davis. The Illustrators of Alice in Wonderland (London: Academy Editions; New York: Martin's Press, 1979).
4 The mixture of Carroll's two Alices is intentional, since I am not referring to the book, but to the Alices who journey forward and unfold in multiple journeys in different media and forms of expression.
Yayoi Kusama
■' Hubert, Renee Riese. Surrealism and the Book (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988). 6 Ovenden, Graham, and John Davis. The Illustrators of Alice
in Wonderland. 1 This paragraph incorporates ideas from Prof. Dr. Norval
Baitello, Jr.'s As imagens que nos devoram - Antropofagia
e Iconofagia (CISC, 2000), www.cisc.org.br/portal/
biblioteca/iconofagia.pdf.
8 Gatopor lebre is an expression in Portuguese that literally translates as "cat in the place of hare" and refers to
a clever con or what is sometimes referred to as a "switcheroo."
9 Machado, Antonio. "Caminante no hay camino, se hace el camino al andar," in Machado, Regina. Acordais (Sao Paulo: DCL, 2004), 63.
10 Ideas from Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964) discussed in Augusto Campos's O Anticritico (Sao Paulo: Companhia das letras, 1986), 126.
11 "Where Do We Go from Here?" (Ou allons-nous?) , a talk delivered at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art on March 20, 1961, first published in the Duchamp issue of Studio International 189 (Jan.-Feb., 1975), repr. in Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, "Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy, 1887-1968" in Pontus Hulten, ed., Marcel Duchamp, Work and Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). Translated by Helen Meakins.
12 Carroll, Lewis. Alice au Pays des Merveilles. ill. Alain Gauthier (Paris: Rageot, 1994).
13 Carroll, Lewis. Alica v krajine zdzrakov, ill. Dusan Kallay (Bratislava, Slovakia: Mlade leta, 1981). Translated into and published also in German (Dausien, 1984), French (Grund, 1985), and Japanese (Shinshosha, 1990). The Slovak edition was reprinted by Slovart in 2010, and is forthcoming in English.
14 Jonathan Miller's movie Alice in Wonderland, BBC, 1966.
31
www.martinbarooshian.org/Alice in Wonderland Entrance.htm.
Carroll, Lewis. Les aventures d 'Alice au Pays des Merveilles, ill. Nicole Claveloux (Paris: Flammarion, 1972). Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland. Prem. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, 2007.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ill. Abelardo Morell (New York: Dutton Children's Books, 1998).
Carroll, Lewis. Les Aventures d Alice au Pays des Merveilles, ill. Andiony Browne (Paris: Kaleidoscope, 1988). http://cahiley.com/portfolio/drawings. Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ill. John Vernon Lord (Oxford: Artists Choice Editions, 2009). Ralph Steadman's illustrations to editions of Wonderland (London: Dobson Books, 1967) and Looking-glass (London: Mac-Gibbon &: Kee, 1972) have often been reprinted.
Lee, Suzy. Alice in Wonderland (Verona: Grafiche Siz, 2002).
Electronic music composer Randy Greifs Alice in Wonderland, first released on the Staalplaat label in The Netherlands between 1991 and 1993 and re-released by Soleilmoon in 2000.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Abenteuer im Wunderland, ill. Jassen Ghiuselev (Aufbau-Verlag, 2000), released in English in 2003 by Simply Read Books (as Iassen Ghiuselev). Carroll, Lewis. Alice im Wunderland, ill. Julia Gukova (Esslingen, Germany:J. F. Schreiber, 1991). Carroll, Lewis. Alice no pais das maravilhas, ill. Luiz Zerbini (Sao Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2009).
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ill. Oleg Lipchenko (Toronto: Tundra Books, 2009). www.tyxikanov.com.
John Rae wrote and illustrated New Adventures of Alice (Volland, 1917), in which she visited Mother Goose characters; Dorothy Furness illustrated Brenda Girvin's Round Fairyland with Alice (Wells Gardner Darton, 1948), in which she \isits fairies around the world; Edward Bloomfield illustrated Howard R. Garis's Uncle Wiggily and Alice in Wonderland (Bloomfield, 1918). http://brasillewiscarroll.blogspot.com/2009/09/alice- na-arte-por-arlindo-daibert.html. Japanese artist Kuniyoshi Kaneko has depicted Alice in a variety of media, from book illustrations to video games. A survey of his works may be found on http:// alicenations.blogspot.com/search?q=Kaneko+Kuniyoshi. www.dorothycircusgallery.com/past_detail. php?ID=32. Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland, ill. Tania Ianovskaia (Toronto: Tania Press, 2005 and 2008). www.tanyamiller.com.
Vince Collins's self-produced short film Malice in Wonderland (1982).
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ill. DeLoss McGraw (New York: Harper Collins, 2001).
www.elenakalisphoto.com/#alice-in-waterland. www.kokusyokusumire.net/AliceinUnderground.html. Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ill. Maggie Taylor (Palo Alto, CA: Modernbook Editions, 2008). Silverwood Films, 2008, directed by Daniel Barnz and starring Elle Fanning.
Computer game designer of American McGee's Alice (2000)
and Alice: Madness Returns (201 1 ) .
Clearwater, Bonnie. Anna Gaskell. Catalog (Museum of
Contemporary Art, North Miami, 1998).
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ill. Camille
Rose Garcia (New York: Harper Design, 2010).
www.rose-alice.net.
Brown, Trevor. Alice (Tokyo, Japan: Editions Treville, 2010).
Svankmajer is mainly known for his 1988 film Alice (Ncoz Alenky) . His book illustrations to Wonderland and Looking- glass are discussed in the next section. From the book of children's images to the book of poetic images. On the bridge that links dreams to reality. On the border between Utopia and truth. Breton inaugurated the Gravida Gallery with a pamphlet dedicated to the surrealist ideal of childish femininity, in which the cited passage could be read. Bradley, Fiona. Surrealismo (Sao Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 1999), 49. Mabille, Pierre. Mirror of the Marvelous (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1998). Nieres-Chevrel, Isabelle. "Alice dans la mythologie surrealiste," in Lewis Carroll et les mythologies de I'enfance, ed. Sophie Manet (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 153-65.
Fushigi no Kuni no Arisu (Tokyo: Kokushokankokai, 2011) translated by Satomi Hisami, illustrated by Jan Svankmajer. Kagami no Kuni no Arisu (Tokyo: Kokushokankoka, 2011) translated by Satomi Hisami, illustrated by Jan Svankmajer.
Campos, Paulo Mendes. "Para Maria da Graca," in Para gostar de ler 4, cronicas (Sao Paulo: Atica, 1979), 73-76. Somers, Sean. "Arisu in harajuku" in Alice Beyond Wonderland: Essays for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Christopher Hollingsworth (University of Iowa Press, 2009), 199. Sumiko Yagawa is referred to in the article in the Japanese manner, patronymic first, i.e., Yagawa Sumiko.
Mesquita, Cristiane. "Roupa territorio da existencia" in Fashion Theory: A revista da moda, corpo e cultural, no. 2 (Sao Paulo: Editora Anhembi Morumbi, 2002): 121. Adapted from ideas from Rosane Preciosa's Producdo Estetica: Notas sobre roupas, sujeitos e modos de vida (Sao Paulo: Anhembi Morumbi, 2005).
32
^
HK^
^
^
Tfee Deaneny Gauden
I was initially surprised (not to say deeply shocked) at Adam Gopnik's recent likening of the work of Charles Dodgson/ Lewis Carroll to that of Norton Juster/Norton Juster. (The New Yorker, October 17, 2011). What was Mr. Gopnik driving at? If he is right in saying "[The Phantom Tollbooth is] the clos- est thing that American literature has to an 'Alice in Wonderland' [sic] of its own ... with illustrations that are as perfectly matched to Juster's text as Tenniel's were to Carroll's ..." perhaps we should simply recognize AATWand TPT as the respective products of ap- proximately two thousand years of the development of Western civilization in Britain as compared to approximately one tenth that amount of time in the United States.
I do agree with Mr. Gopnik's remarks about the illustrators of the respective books. The richness of Carroll is reflected in the exqui- site detail and complexity of Tenn- iel's drawings. Juster's simplicity is
perfectly aligned Feiffer's fluidity, though I must question whether TPT is the latter 's best work.1
This is not the place for a de- tailed critique of either book, but I cannot help feeling that TPT does not even plumb the depths of the Pool of Tears. There is simply no comparison between the quality of Carroll's language and Juster's, to say nothing of the quality of the puns. Where Carroll invents, Juster inserts.-' While TPTmay delight a precocious reader often, does it do the same for readers of twenty, thirty, forty, and so on, as does AATW?
Full disclosure: before reading Mr. Gopnik's article I reread TPT, and while it did occasion the oc- casional chortle it certainly did not give the satisfaction, stimulation, or inspiration AATW and TTLG always provide this reader of ad- mittedly advanced years. ' Perhaps it is best to say that Mr. Gopnik's article proves once again that comparisons are odious (as well as sometimes alarming), and wistfully
yearn for a view into the future to see the reactions of its readers to see if TPT is indeed a classic. For myself, I will continue to steer readers young and old toward Wonderland rather than Diction- opolis.
Fernly Bowers, PhD, DVM, etc.
French Gulch, California
1 In tribute to Mr. Juster, I was quite surprised to learn that there is
no picture of the hero actually driving past the tollbooth; I had only imagined a very clear image of Feiffer's nonexistent drawing of this incident.
2 As has been noted elsewhere, Carroll's books have pervaded our culture and are among the most quoted in the world; I for one have never come across a reference
to TFT that is expected to be understood by the casual reader.
3 One should never ask a gentleman his age.
as
As a further comment to Mark Burstein's article "Am I Blue?" in Knight Letter 85, 1 note that Alice wears a blue dress (with red
33
trim) in the set of Coloured Lantern Slides that was pro- duced between 1893 and 1898 by Primus, the London photographic company, and sold in three boxed sets of eight slides each for home
viewing. The slides, which mim- icked but varied from Tenniel's illustrations, can also been seen in an edition of Wonderland issued by Harry N. Abrams in 1988, ac- companied by the original "Lan- tern Lecture" abridgment of the
text. In these pictures, Alice wears striped socks, as she does in Look- ing-Glassr, in Tenniel's Wonderland they are plain.
Yoshiyuki Momma
LCS-Japan
One of [Charles Schulz's] favorite compliments of Peanuts was hear- ing it compared to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Rheta Grimsky Johnson, Good
Grief, The Story of Charles M.
Schulz, Pharos Books, New York,
1989
HSr
^h
"Can't say. Is she a Snark or a Boojum? Only time will tell." Robertson Dairies, The Lyre of Orpheus, Viking Penguin, Inc., New York, 1988
HSr
In St. Aubyn's world, whoever controls the retelling controls the event. We might call it, after Lewis Carroll, the Humpty- Dumpty effect.
Zadie Smith, reviewing At Last, by Edivard St. Aubyn, Harpers, August 2011
Then [Adenauer] took a trip to Oxford and visited Balliol — where his nephew Hans had been an undergraduate — and New Col- lege. He was also scheduled to visit Oriel, but here unpleasantness set in: a group of students at the gates became so abusive that the police directed the official cars through Canterbury Gate and into Christ Church instead. . . . An under- graduate . . . pointed out the statue of Dean Liddell, the father of the real-life Alice in Wonderland. He began to explain that the Deanery Garden was at the centre of an important English children's book
^e^rV
when Adenauer suddenly stopped and smiled, quite unruffled by the demonstration he had witnessed, and astonished everyone present, British and German alike, by reel- ing off long quotations from the book.
The Oxford Times, May 11, 2011, ref- erencing Charles Williams, Adenauer: The Father of the New Germany, Little, Brown and Company, 2000.
m
Everything was smaller than he remembered it — it was like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and he'd drunk the magic tonic. He felt like his head was sticking out of the chimney, and his arm was out the window.
Lev Grossman, The Magician King, Viking, New York, 2011
3S
When she did this, she suddenly descended several inches, giving the disconcerting impression that she was shrinking, like Alice after consuming the botde labeled "Drink Me."
Rebecca Mead, "Precarious Beauty, " the New Yorker, September 26, 2011
"Oh," he said, faindy ashamed to be drinking the guy's tea after he'd reduced him to some capitalized character out of Lewis Carroll. Thomas Mallon, Arts and Sciences, A Seventies Seduc- tion, Ticknor & Fields, New York, 1988
m
'You are very decisive yourself. Especially for someone who has lived so far from the centre of things."
"But it's the centre of things for me," I said, and "I'm sixteen years old. Alice was a child and every- thing was every day for her. She'd seen nothing odd. She just lived in Oxford."
"Her dreams say otherwise." Jane Gardam, Crusoe's Daughter, Atheneum, New York, 1986
%
There is not a word in the Alices, nor a line of drawing, to be ex- plained or regretted.
F.J. Harvey Darton, Children's Books in England, Cambridge University Press, 1 932
Hfr
She could tell from the way I squirmed that I found this answer highly unsatisfactory. It was a Mad Hatter answer, a March Hare an- swer. Mama couldn't expect to read me the Alice books a hun- dred dmes and get away with such nonsense.
Michael Faber, The Apple: Crimson Petal Stories, Canon- gate Books Ltd., Edinburgh, 2011
34
" LllGo V ^ OF MARK BURSTEIN
First, of course, kudos and props to those who made the fall New York meeting such a suc- cess, starting with Edward Guiliano and his fine staff at NYIT, especially Jennifer Cucura, in this smoothly operating and in all ways superb venue; to Andrew Sellon, who so nobly stepped in to arrange for our dinner; to those who traveled from Chicago, Cleveland, California, North Carolina, and even far- ther afield — Ireland, Brazil, and Puerto Rico to be precise; to Janet Jurist and Ellie Heller for their generous hospital- ity to our out-of-town guests; and to our fabulous presenters: Adriana Peliano, Paulo Beto, James Foto- poulos, Emily Aguilo-Perez, Mor- ton Cohen, Alison Gopnik (and her silent partner, Alvy Ray Smith) , Jeff Menges, and Michael Everson in a most delightful surprise ap- pearance, reading a passage from Ailice's Aventurs in Wunnerland in his hilarious Scottish burr.
The Alice 150 project planning is proceeding apace, thanks to the diligent efforts of Jon Lindseth and Joel Birenbaum. We have produced a "vision statement"; attracted a PR management firm whose other clients include Target, GE, and Google; and have contracted with Oxford University Press for the Alice in a World of Wonderlands volumes, a worthy successor to Warren Weaver's Alice in Many Tongues.
July 4, 2012, will be the 150th anniversary of a cer- tain boat trip on the Isis. As this event will be falling on our national holiday celebrating our freedom from our erstwhile British oppressors, it may be difficult to get media coverage. However, we will be working with the LCS(UK) to come up with something apropos. If nothing else, on that day, reenact it yourself: Grab a copy of Under Ground or Wonderland to read (or down- load the Cyril Ritchard recording from Amazon into your mobile device), invite a child or three, pack a picnic, find a spot along a nearby river (extra credit if you row there), and linger in the golden gleam.
As I am one who likes to plan things well in ad- vance, here is our meeting schedule for the next three years: Spring 20 12: April 28th at the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the next day at Alan and Alison Tannenbaum's
collection in nearby Chelmsford. Fall 2012: most like- ly New York University. Spring 20 ly. Stephanie Lovett and Charlie Lovett will be our hosts in North Caro- lina. Fall 20 1 y. the amazing sculptor Karen Mortillaro and the indomitable Dan Singer have offered to ar- range a meeting in Los Angeles. Spring 2014: "Some- where in New York," as the song goes. Fall 2014: Day- na (McCausland) Nuhn, Mahendra Singh, and Andy Malcolm, along with Tania Ianovskaia and Oleg Lip- chenko, have agreed to host a joint LCSNA and LCSCanada meeting in Toronto. Spring 201 5: San Diego, in conjunction with the grand opening of the Center for the Study of Chil- dren's Literature at San Diego State University. Fall 2075: October 10-11 in New York City for Alicel50.
Meetings such as the one we just had (and the ones coming up) are truly magical times to meet up with friends old and new. I particu- larly treasure an afternoon spent at my mom's Manhattan apartment with my longtime cyber- and Skype friend Adriana Peliano, whom I got to meet face-to-face (along with her husband, Paulo) for the very first time. The al- ways delightful Maxine Schaefer reading, this time at Horace Mann (reluctant though I was to mention that I had, in fact, attended their biggest rival, The Fieldston School). The meeting itself, of course, including the breaks. Relax- ing conversa- tion over a fine Fiorello dinner. Janet's convivial after-party.
So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as ivell she might, ivhat a won derful dream it had been.
35
^
^
On the Discovery 01 an rLn^Iish Jabberwocky
ALAN LEVINOVITZ
^Hh
**►
"^ W hile browsing the philosophy section of a
% #% # Chicago antiquarian bookshop, I found ml jLi coffee-stained piece of paper folded inside a copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophi- cal Investigations. On it, in a neat script, was written a note, followed by a version of Jabberwocky in my native tongue! Yes, it was in English. An unidentified author (the sheet was unsigned) had rendered Car- roll's poem using only authentic English words. It was the first time I had ever seen the feat attempted.
I reproduce here the short note preceding the translation, the poem itself, and some annotations explaining the poet's intentions. These last, please understand, are no more than educated guesses, but I am fairly confident about their accuracy. Of course nonsense, even sensical nonsense, is no friend of con- fidence, and so I have withheld my speculations about the second half of the poem in hopes that other inter- preters might feel free to make their own. Please en- sure your dictionary is up to the task — I have looked up all the words and confirmed their sensicality, but oftentimes only by resorting to my trusty OED.
Transcription of note (this portion of the paper was afflicted with coffee stains that mercifully spared the translation itself): Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Too much nonsense is [illegible]. Plenty of words al- ready, enough for nearly any [illegible] . Why not sub- stitute a [illegible] version for children? [illegible] without nonsense.
•* JABBER-COCKY *?•
'Twas grilled eve, and the slubbering skunks Did whirl and windle in time's way;
All wimpy were the feathered monks, and monotremes did bray.
"Beware the Jabber-cock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that loot! Beware the Ju-Jak bird, and shun
The scurrilous Bandicoot!"
He took his vorax sword in hand:
Long time the Soddish foe he sought —
So rested he by the Pando tree, And stood awhile in thought.
And as in huffled thought he stood, The Jabber-cock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the bilgy wood, And gorbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorax blade went slice-dice-hack!
He left it dead, and with its head He went gallanting back.
"And, hast thou slain the Jabber-cock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O grampus day! Huzzah! Hurray!" He snortled in his joy.
'Twas grilled eve, and the slubbering skunks Did whirl and windle in time's way;
All wimpy were the feathered monks, and monotremes did bray.
36
Jabberwocky /Jabber-cocky: Self-evident.
brillig/grilled eve: In the 1855 issue of Misch-Masch, Carroll independently confirms brillig as meaning "The time of broiling dinner, i.e., the close of the af- ternoon." Here "grilled eve" evokes that very culinary hour — eve means "the close of the day" — while dupli- cating the visual and acoustic weight of brillig's dou- ble 1. Although the full import of Humpty-Dumpty's later definition (4:00 in the afternoon when you begin broiling things for dinner) is not completely incorpo- rated, the use of "grilled" must be counted a valiant effort in that direction. And given the alternate sense of "grilled" as "fearful," one would be hard-pressed to find a better alternative. The rest of the poem is, if nothing else, the chronicle of a fearful evening.
slithy/slubbering: The noun form of "slubber" means "slime," and the verb means "to soil," as well as "to run or skim over something in a slovenly manner." Elsewhere, Carroll defines his original term as a com- bination of lithe and slimy. Here, perhaps, the trans- lation is closer to the nonsense sense of slithy than slithy itself, thanks to those rich deposits of meaning that only time and reality can bestow upon a word.
toves/skunks: Toves, Carroll informs us, are a species of badger with smooth white hair, long hind legs, and short horns like a stag, that live chiefly on cheese. Skunks and badgers both belong to the Mustilidae family, and the skunk's smooth hair (admittedly white and black) as well as its well-known taste for cheese make it an ideal substitution.
gyre /whirl: A problematic translation. As it turns out, gyre is a real word, an archaic form of gyrate that ap- plies especially to circular oceanic surface currents. This causes difficulty for everyone involved: Humpty- Dumpty defines it as "to go round and round like a gyroscope"; Carroll writes at one point that it means "to scratch like a dog"; and our translator appears to have replaced a perfectly legitimate word — perhaps for the sake of alliteration?
gimble/windle: Gimble, again from Carroll: "to screw out holes in anything." And from Humpty-Dumpty we have "to make holes, as with a gimlet." "Windle" straightforwardly describes the motion of screwing: to move circularly or sinuously; to turn over and over, or round and round.
wabe/time's way: Alice herself correctly intuits that "wabe" refers to the grass-plot around a sun-dial, and Humpty-Dumpty confirms her intuition. Here that sense is rendered as time's way. A loose translation, to be sure, chosen most likely for the sake of the rhyme.
mimsy /wimpy: "Mimsy" could be "unhappy" (Carroll) or a portmanteau of flimsy and miserable (Humpty- Dumpty). "Wimpy" functions as a portmanteau of two other English words, limp and weepy, which them- selves correspond to flimsy and miserable quite nice- ly. Of course, wimpy is no mere portmanteau — on its own it means weak or sniveling.
borogoves/feathered monks: One Carrollian primary source has borogoves as a sort of extinct parrot. Monk is often used by avian enthusiasts as shorthand for monk- bird, a type of parrot. "Feathered" emphasizes the avian sense of monk, and may also refer to the extinct practice of tarring and feathering unscrupulous holy men.
mome raths/monotremes: "Monotreme" designates those rare mammals that lay eggs, such as duck-billed platypuses. As such, it is a fitting stand-in for the con- troversial "mome raths" — Carroll asserts they are "grave turtles," while Humpty-Dumpty maintains that they are homesick green pigs of a sort. This web of Carrollian metaconfusion is reflected in the very real biological confusion of the monotreme.
outgrabe/bray: Here there is no confusion. All sourc- es identify "outgrabe" as the past tense of "outgribe," meaning "to squeak or whistle loudly." Braying can refer to any loud, harsh cry, although it is usually as- sociated with asses, not monotremes.
catch/loot: Some small change in meaning for the sake of rhyme — a fair exchange, I think.
Jubjub/Ju-Jak: The Jubjub bird is described extensive- ly in Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. To condense: It is an exotic bird, and one to be feared. Jujak is the standard romanized Korean name for the Chinese vermillion bird, a mythical creature that represents fire and controls its surroundings by magic.
frumious/scurrilous: In The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll provides an extraordinary explanation of fru- mious: "This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard words in ("Jabberwocky"). Humpty- Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words 'fuming' and 'furious.' Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards 'fuming,' you will say 'fuming-furious.'"
"Scurrilous" connotes both fuming and furi- ous— it refers to vituperative or invective language. In the margin, the translator has written "spurious + scuttling." "Scuttle" is descriptive of action taken in a street fight, as in this citation from the OED: "Five men, or rather lads, were in the dock (at the Man- chester City Sessions) charged with 'scutding'..." "Spurious," of course, means illegitimate (particularly of writing), and it seems the translator might here be sacrificing literal translation for a play on words.
bandersnatch/bandicoot: The bandersnatch is often understood as a swift-moving creature capable of extending its neck. "Bander" is also an archaic term for "leader." The bandicoot is a small marsupial with sharp teeth and fierce territorial instincts, capable of running extremely quickly.
37
^
■*►
ALL MUST HAVE PRIZES
You Can Get Anything You Want, in Alice's Restaurant
^r
JOEL BIRENBAUM
■^^^^^s we approach 2015, my thoughts ^^^\ are consumed with the promi- M. Xnence of Alice in popular culture, as that is the theme of the Alicel50 celebration. The use of Alice in advertising is an important vantage point from which to view the phenomenon of Alice's omnipresence in everyday life. What is presented here is a sampling of magazine and newspaper ads to show how Alice was used to promote products over the years. What are not included here are ads for Alice products such as movies, records, books, toys, etc.
I have to admit that I approached this column in a looking-glass fashion, conclusion first and research after. Usually this works out fine, since I have a fairly inclusive knowledge of Alice collectibles. This time, however, I was way off target. My preconceived notion was that Alice characters and themes were so mallea- ble and applicable that they could be used cleverly to
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'In autumn, wnen the leaves are brown, I like to qiuiffa Guinness down."
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suit most any product. I still think this is true,
but the evidence shows that, more often than
not, Alice was not used to the greatest effect. In
many cases, illustrations of Alice characters were put in ads just to attract readers' eyes to an ad they might otherwise not read, and little or no attempt was made to inject any Carrollian humor or logic.
Cream of Wheat produced a Mad Tea Party ad in 1901, followed by a marvelous Queen Alice ad in 1908 ("To the Looking-glass World it was Alice that said/'I've a scepter in hand I've a crown on my head/ Let the Looking-glass creatures whatever they be/ Come and eat Cream of Wheat with the Queens and with me"'). The first decade of the 1900s also gave us a single ad per year for Peter's Chocolate from 1904 ("'This isn't a circus,' said the Hatter severely to Al- ice. 'It's a tea-party and you're not invited.' 'Oh, yes, I am,' said Alice. 'There's PETER'S CHOCOLATE on the table and that's always inviting.'"), and a Water- man's Pens ad also in 1904. In later years, the Alice motif was used by other cereal and chocolate compa- nies, and the use of Alice by these products does not seem unreasonable. The first half of the twentieth century was rounded out by ads for Lowney's Choco- late, Post Toasties, Western Electric, Whitman Candy, Quaker Oats, Steinway Pianos, Electrolux Gas Refrig- erators, Guinness, Wrigley Gum Nash automobiles, the Cunard Line, Heinz, Ford ("'MY,' said Alice, 'the new Ford is such fun to drive!'"), Comptometer, San- ka, Textron Menswear, Dumont televisions, Kayser Hosiery, Welch's Grape Jelly, Red Goose Shoes, Phil- co, and Rose's Lime Juice. The Wrigley Gum ad was a tie-in with the 1933 Paramount movie starring Char- lotte Henry. The Western Electric ad promoted their tall telephone, but gas refrigerators, automobiles, menswear, and lime juice haven't even got a tenuous connection, and how many of you even know what a comptometer is? And the diversity of this range of products is exceeded in the latter half of the century.
Alice was fair game for advertising any product from 1951 on, and the Disney movie added a new dimension to Alice in advertising land. The Disney Alice was used by General Electric ("I never guessed what made me cross/Poor lighting was the matter./ With soft and cool fluorescent light/I'm now a gay Mad Hatter"), Roval Desserts, Libbv foods, Swans
38
Down cake mixes, and NBC White Bread. Non- Disney Alice still maintained prominence in this era with: Sirrine Engines, Metlife, Post Toasties, Owens- Corning Fiberglass (Alice in Insulation-Land), Burl- ington Industries, Maidenform ("I dreamed I was a mad hatter in my maidenform bra"), Boeing, Merrill Lynch, Ryan Industries (cryogenics), Sony, Douglas aeronautics, Smirnoff Vodka, Rexall drugs, Alcan Ca- ble, Hi-C juice, Fender Guitar, Mobil Oil, Precision Monolithics, IBM, and Microsoft. Fender exploited the connection between rock music and drug use, by showing the hookah-smoking caterpillar playing two Stratocaster electric guitars (thereby also taking ad- vantage of the caterpillar's multiple appendages).
I would have to say that the heyday of Alice in advertising was 1930-1970. The Guinness ads, which appeared between 1931 and 1958, were definitely the cleverest of the bunch, with excellent copywrit- ing and fine illustrations. They also win the award for longest time span. Philco's campaign of 1948 was of high quality as well as extensive, and appeared in eight different major magazines. The breadth of this campaign makes these the easiest ads for collectors to find. An ad for Quaker Oats was probably the most collectable ad for a time, because it was illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, although this artwork was no match for her famous Alice illustration in Boys and Girls in Bookland, published by Cosmopolitan in 1923. Basildon Bond and BOAC are the only two ads that also have Lewis Carroll in them. The Precision Mono- lithics ad campaign of 1979 was highly successful and was awarded the Industrial Advertising Award (KL 14:4). This was a case of a talented marketing service manager, Gene McClenning, using his great interest in Alice to sell an unlikely set of products.
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If you collect Alice ads, the temptation is to pick the highpoints. Having a few of the ads in your col- lection is nice, but the more you have the better ap- preciation you will have for Alice's place in advertising history, and in popular culture.
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39
BEAVER PROBLEMS:
SNARK ARITHMETIC
&A TRUCULENT ALLUSION
August A. Imholtz, Jr.
In "Fit the Fifth: The Beaver's Les- son" of Lewis Carroll's unsurpassed nonsense epyllion The Hunting of the Snark, the Beaver bemoans the fact that he had lost count of the number of times his companion, the Butcher, had cried ovit on hearing the Jubjub Bird.
Here is that whole short passage:
"Tis the voice of the Jubjub!"
he suddenly cried. (This man, that they used
to call "Dunce.") "As the Bellman would tell you,"
he added with pride, "I have uttered that sentiment
once." "Tis the note of the Jubjub!
Keep count, I entreat; You will find I have told it
you twice. 'Tis the song of the Jubjub!
The proof is complete, If only I've stated it thrice." The Beaver had counted with
scrupulous care, Attending to every word: But it fairly lost heart, and
outgrabe in despair, When the third repetition
occurred. It felt that, in spite of all possible
pains, It had somehow contrived to
lose count, And the only thing now was
to rack its poor brains By reckoning up the amount. "Two added to one — if that could
but be done," It said, "with one's fingers and
thumbs!" Recollecting with tears how,
in earlier years, It had taken no pains with
its sums.
The problem, however, goes beyond the Beaver's racking of its poor little brain to reckon up the amount. A beaver cannot add "two to one" or do any addition "with one's fingers and thumbs" for the
Carrollian Notes
simple reason that a beaver has no thumbs. Perhaps because that is so obvious a fact, Martin Gardner did not mention it in his otherwise rich and extensive annotations in either his The Annotated Snark (1962) or his The Annotated Snark: The Definitive Edition (2006).
Carroll of course would have seen beavers in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where an American beaver is listed in the 1836 Catalogue Descriptive of the Zoological Species, Antiquities, Coins, and Miscellaneous Curiosities. And perhaps it is even more impor- tant to note that Carroll owned a copy of The American Beaver by Lewis H. Morgan (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1868). See also Charlie Lovett's excellent work Lewis Carroll Among His Books (Jef- ferson, North Carolina: McFarland 8c Company, 2005), in which he notes, regarding another beaver conundrum, that "speculation as to the gender of ( the Snark Bea- ver) should perhaps be colored by Morgan's assertion that the mother is the most important member of the Beaver colony" (p. 217).
Beavers may be divided into two species: the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber). Physiologically, according to An- drew Kitchener, "Although super- ficially similar to each other, there are several important differences between the two species. Eurasian beavers tend to be bigger, with larger, less rounded heads, longer, narrower muzzles, thinner, shorter
and lighter underfur, narrower, less oval-shaped tails and shorter shin bones, making them less capable of bipedal locomotion than the North American species. Eurasian beavers have longer nasal bones than their North American cousins, with the widest point being at the end of the snout for the former, and in the middle for the latter. The nasal opening for the Eurasian species is triangular, unlike that of the North American race, which is square. The fora- men magnum is rounded in the Eurasian beaver, and triangular in the North American. The anal glands of the Eurasian beaver are larger and thin-walled with a large internal volume compared to that of the North American breed. Finally, the guard hairs of the Eurasian beaver have a longer hollow medulla at their tips. Fur colour is also different. Overall, 66% of Eurasian beavers have pale brown or beige fur, 20% have red- dish brown, nearly 8% are brown and only 4% have blackish coats. In North American beavers, 50% have pale brown fur, 25% are red- dish brown, 20% are brown and 6% are blackish." (Andrew Kitch- ener, Beavers, 2001; Stowmarket: Whittet, p. 144.) One would sus- pect that the Beaver in the crew of the Snark expedition is a Eur- asian one. Interestingly, the bea- ver has been extinct in England since the sixteenth century, so perhaps the Bellman impressed him into naval service on an ear- lier voyage.
There is no other occurrence of a beaver in the text of any of Lewis Carroll's fictional works, although Tenniel's illustration at the beginning of Chapter III of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland may depict a beaver at the ex- treme right of the picture, above the crab. Most of Tenniel's pool of tears menagerie are derived from Carroll's own illustration of this scene in Alice's Adventures Under Ground, so one can safely infer that Carroll deliberately
4°
selected the Beaver. In his "Dou- blets" contribution to Vanity Fair 22 (Oct. 11, 1879), one of the challenges Carroll poses is to change the word BEAVER into the word BRANDY by altering one let- ter at a time, for that is, of course, how the Doublets game works.
In a Nov. 24, 1877, letter to his cousin Lucy Wilcox, however, Carroll intriguingly writes: "Why shouldn't we enjoy the things we 'have to' do? Why, I believe even the beaver that had to go up the tree was glad to do it. At least, you know, it could have stayed below if it had liked." Professor Morton N. Cohen wryly observes in his note on that passage that "We cannot identify this particu- lar beaver" ( The Letters of Lewis Carroll, Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1979, Vol. 1, p. 288). From Carroll's tone and his clear supposition that Lucy would be familiar with this beaver story, it would seem that the reference must be to some fable or story. And yet, which one? There is only one fable dealing with beavers in Aesop, but that beaver does not climb a tree, nor do the other ref- erences to beavers in Aristotle or in more obscure classical authors recount any tree-climbing beavers.
In the January 1871 issue of The Galaxy (Vol. 11, no. 1), an Ameri- can magazine, Mark Twain had published the following anecdote:
While up the river I heard the following story show- ing how an animal can rise when necessary superior to its nature: "You see," said the narrator, "the beaver took to the water and the dog was after him. First the beaver was ahead and then the dog. It was tuck and nip whether the dog would catch the beaver, and nuck and tip whether the beaver would catch the dog. Fi- nally the beaver got across the river and the dog had almost caught him, when phit! Up the beaver skun up a tree."
"But," said a bystander, "beavers can't climb trees."
"A beaver can't climb a tree? By gosh, he had to climb a tree, the dog was crowdin him so!" (p. 156)
The only other reference to a beaver in a tree that I can find occurs in a fable "The bear in the quicksand" in a 2004 anthology, Brilliant Stories for Assemblies, edited by Paul Urry (Edinburgh: Brilliant Publications). Here is the relevant passage:
"Please," begged the bear. "Won't someone help and get me out of the sand?" Straight away the beaver ran up a tree. She ate quickly through some vines and dragged them to the side of the quicksand ..." (p. 8)
In spite of Urry's statement that this is an ancient Greek fable, I can find it nowhere in ancient Greek literature. In fact, if any- thing, it might sound at first more like a Sanskrit fable than a Greek one, except for the fact that there are no beavers in India.
There is at least one more tree-climbing-beaver expression to be found in Henry C. Row- land's Across Europe in a Motor Boat (1908) on p. 124:
"On the whole we felt that the most arduous part of our journey lay behind us, while the crucial point, that of getting up the shallow Main and into the old Lud- wig Canal, was now removed but a few days. All that we were able to learn on this important question was of the most discouraging char- acter, but as Pomeroy cheer- fully remarked, it was simply
a case where the Beaver had to climb the tree!"
Perhaps when all nineteenth- century British newspapers and periodicals are digitized, it will be possible to determine whether one or more of them reprinted Twain's tall tale of the tree-climbing beaver. If so, that might have been the beaver to which Carroll alludes in his let- ter to his cousin Lucy Lutwidge. Until then, this particular Beaver reference will likely remain just another gnawing problem.
8S
LITTLE ALICE IN AMERICA
Clare Imholtz
Lewis Carroll had a poor opin- ion of Americans. He dumped rejected copies of three of his books — Wonderland, The Game of Logic, and The Nursery Alice — in this country. (All three rejected editions are now rarities for collec- tors.) About Nursery Alice, Carroll said that he could not possibly sell the rejects, which he deemed "too gaudy," in England — to do so would ruin his reputation — but they would do very well for Ameri- cans, who cared little about quality.
That may have overstated the case, but perhaps Carroll had rea- son to be upset with us. During his lifetime, several U.S. periodicals mistakenly gave Carroll credit for composing a poem that was actu- ally written by his cousin, Menella Bute Smedley, a rather sweet and sentimental poem that Carroll might have parodied in Wonder- land, were it not by his cousin, of whom he was quite fond. Worse, these periodicals got the title of Carroll's book wrong, saying that Smedley's poem appeared in " Little Alice in Wonderland."
The problem, however, did originate in England, and with the venerable weekly The Specta- tor, which reviewed Wonderland twice, first on December 23, 1865, and then again, inexplicably, on December 22, 1866, as part of
41
a package review of twenty-one children's books. On the second occasion, The Spectator twice called Carroll's book Little Alice in Wonder- land, never once providing the cor- rect tide. Little Alice 'was the third book reviewed, following Hans Christian Andersen's Stories for the Household (they spelled Andersen's name wrong, too) and Aunt Judy 's Christmas Volume for 1866, in which Smedley's poem (the title of which they also got wrong) had appeared.
The review praised all three books. The comments about Aunt Judy and Little Alice abut one another closely, as there are no paragraph breaks throughout the entire piece. Speaking first of Aunt Judy, The Spectator writes:
We must ask our readers to believe in the worth of the stories and the general contents on the strength of our assertion; but we can give a specimen of the verse which is by no means above the average, and is still in our opinion amongst the most taking that we have ever seen in productions of this kind. The stanzas are the opening ones of the "Child's Address to the Rose" — a poem dedicated to Ceci- lia Tennyson, and in their pleasing simplicity worthy of their destina- tion, supposing the lady in ques- tion to be a poet's daughter: —
"White rose, talk to me!
I don't know what to do. Why do you say no word to me
Who say so much to you?
"I'm bringing you a little rain, And I shall be so proud
If, when you feel it on your face, You take me for a cloud.
"Here I come so softly
You can not hear me walking; If I take you by surprise
I may catch you talking.
"Tell all your thoughts to me.
Whisper in my ear; Talk against the winter,
He shall never hear.
"I can keep a secret
Since I was five years old;
Tell if you were frightened When first you felt the cold;
"And in the splendid summer, While you flush and grow,
Are you ever out of heart. Thinking of the snow?"
We must not omit to mention that there is a pretty illustration attached to this poem, and that the engravings generally are above the average, and decid- edly enhance the charm of the volume. Little Alice in Wonderland, we are not surprised to see, has reached a fifth thousand; so much clever and yet genuine fun in the letter-press, and so much grace and humour in the illus- trations have never before been found within the same compass. The sweet figure of little Alice contrasts delightfully all through the book with the funny creatures and people she encounters in her most exciting journey; and as she never makes a slip in her man- ners or loses her sense of propri- ety in the most trying situations, her story may be considered as strictly moral as it is exquisitely amusing. This is the last of the three books that every child ought to have.
The comments on Aunt Judy end with the word "volume," and those on Wonderland begin with the word "Little." Only about a quarter of Smedley's poem, which was actu- ally titled "A Child to a Rose," is quoted in the review.
Within a month, a careless reader, fortunately anonymous, somehow incorporated "A Child to a Rose" into Little Alice, and hand in hand the two crossed the Atlan- tic. Every Saturday, a U.S. weekly, a self-proclaimed "Journal of Choice Reading Selected from Foreign Lit- erature," reprinted the verses from the Spectator review in its January 26, 1867, number, saying, "We find the following graceful verses in a volume entitled Little Alice in Won- derland, a child's book, illustrated
by Tenniel, and published in London by Macmillan."
The spurious title must have stayed in circulation for a few years. In August 1869, The West- ern Monthly (later The Lakeside Monthly), a Chicago journal, pub- lished a review of Mopsa the Fairy by Jean Ingelow, which stated
"Mopsa" is just a little suggestive of another fairy tale that has become household property — "Little Alice in Wonderland" and we should not be surprised to know that the author was well acquainted with it. There are certain unconscious resem- blances between the two — the same odd transitions and queer way of putting things, so marked in "Little Alice." This is particu- larly noticeable in Jack's dream, when charmed to sleep by little Mopsa 's story in the land of the "one-foot-one" fairies — that same wonderfully grotesque imagery, that stepping over into the realm of careless vagaries, which almost unpleasandy sug- gests insanity. We consider this a decided blemish on "Little Alice's Adventures," but doubt whether it is marked enough to be censurable in "Mopsa."
Publication of Lee and Shepard's edition of Wonderland in Spring 1869, which was more widely reviewed and advertised than the Appleton edition of 1866, must have helped to extinguish incidences of the false tide. No further references are found for twenty years. Then, on December 14, 1889, The Critic (New York) prints a letter from one "W.L." of New London, Connecticut, who quotes the passage from the Janu- ary 1867 Every Saturday, and asks, "Was this in the first edition of the book which has since become so well known under the title of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonder- land,' and which was perhaps first published under the title given above?" Sadly for W. L., no reply is recorded.
42
LEWIS CARROLL, MAN OF SCIENCE
Fran Abeles
On August 17, 2011, The Centre for Philosophy of Natural and So- cial Sciences at the London School of Economics was the setting for the first meeting devoted entirely to Lewis Carroll's work in the sci- ences. The sponsors and organiz- ers of this historic event were Mark Richards, chairman of The Lewis Carroll Society (UK); assisted by Amirouche Moktefi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Logic, History and Philosophy of ScienceArchives Poincare laboratory at Nancy Uni- versity; the eminent mathematical historian Ivor Grattan-Guinness, currently at the London School of Economics; and a mathematician well known on both sides of the Atlantic, Robin Wilson, president- elect of the British Society for the History of Mathematics.
All the available seats were booked (and a long waiting list remained) for the daylong confer- ence that began at 9:45 a.m. After everyone had introduced them- selves, Mark and Amirouche of- fered some introductory remarks. Mark then presided over the first session of three talks. Robin, who is the author of the recent mathe- matical biography of Carroll, Lewis Carroll in Numberland (2008), spoke
on "Charles Dodgson and Oxford University." Fran Abeles, editor of three volumes in the Lewis Carroll pamphlets series published by the LCSNA (mathematics, political theory, logic), presented a paper on "Charles Dodgson 's Engagement with Nonfinite Processes, 1885-1895." Edward Wakeling, editor of the ten vol- umes of the published edition of Lewis Carroll's unabridged diaries, described "Charles L. Dodgson and His Mathematical Circle."
The second morning ses- sion, chaired by Robert Thomas, editor of Philosophia Mathematica, consisted of Ivor's talk (dedi- cated to the memory of Tony Beale), "The Appreciation of Carroll by Bertrand Russell and Philip Jourdain," followed by Amirouche's paper, "What Makes Lewis Carroll's 'Symbolic Logic', Symbolic." (Carroll's symbolic logic was the topic of Amirouche's doctoral dissertation.)
From the very beginning of the conference, and continuing up until the very end, Catherine Richards, assisted by LCS com- mittee member Sarah Jardine- Willoughby — who also baked the cakes — took care of all of us with varied and delicious refreshments.
In the first of the two afternoon sessions, chaired by LCS member Sarah Stanfield, Mark, who also is a specialist on Carroll's logic,
spoke on "Dodgson and Darwin." Eugene Seneta, the author of all the authoritative published articles on Carroll's work in probability, and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences, presented his paper, "Lewis Carroll and Probabilistic Science: Some Influences and Contacts." David Singmaster, the well-known mathematician and editor-des- ignate of the games and puzzles volume in the Lewis Carroll pam- phlets series, gave the final paper in this session, "Lewis Carroll's Mathematical Puzzles."
The lively final session, last- ing until 5:30 p.m., was a panel discussion led by Amirouche, who posed provocative questions to the panelists: Fran Abeles, Mark Richards, Edward Wakeling, and Jenny Woolf, author of the recent biography of Carroll, The Mystery of Lewis Carroll (2010). Their re- sponses elicited many remarks as well as additional questions from the audience.
LCSNA members will be informed when the conference proceedings are published. The success of this first-time event has inspired Mark to plan another devoted to Carroll as a scientist that could take place within the next few years. Stay tuned!
43
SIMON SAYS
Mark Burstein
Photojournalist Peter Simon, in his coffee-table biography Eye and I (Bulfinch, 2001), writes about his warm memories of childhood sing- alongs with his talented pianist father, his mother, and his three musical sisters. Two of the sisters, Carly and Lucy, recorded two albums for children in 1963-64 and a third, The Simon Sisters Sing the Lobster Quadrille and Other Songs for Children, for Columbia in 1969. It contained a minor hit, "Wyn- ken, Blynken and Nod," as well as Lucy's setting of Carroll's poem. A compilation, called Carly & Lucy Simon Sing Songs for Children, was released in 1970 by Children's Re- cords of America, and has recendy been reissued on CD by Shout Fac- tory (ISBN 9781603991933).
Sadly, Peter's father, Richard, died in 1960, but the litde publish- ing company he had founded in 1924 with his pal Max Schuster continues to thrive; in fact, it remains to this day one of the most successful English-language publishers. Peter's eldest sister, Joanna, a mezzo-soprano, won the Metropolitan Opera auditions in 1962, and went on to a storied operatic career. The middle sister, Lucy, became a composer for mu- sicals, best known for her setting of The Secret Garden, and has won two Grammys. Wonder whatever happened to Carly?
0*s ^d .
IK
THE LOVE-INS
Mark Burstein
Released by Columbia Pictures in 1967 and recently become avail- able on DVD (Sony Screen Clas- sics by Request) , this wretched endeavor, produced by low-budget schlockmeister Sam Katzman, was one of the first "exploitation" films to portray the newly emerg- ing counterculture, albeit in a clueless, negative manner. Patri- cia Cross (Susan Oliver) and her
^
boyfriend Larry Osborne (James MacArthur — you know, "Danno" Williams of Hawaii Five-O) , portray two students in an unnamed San Francisco college who are expelled for publishing an underground paper, The Tomorrow Times. As a result, a philosophy professor, Dr. Jonathan Barnett (Richard Todd), resigns his teaching position and is soon convinced by a sleazy, con- niving hippie to become a Timothy Leary-type advocate for the youth movement and, specifically, the use of LSD. He gains a cult following.
The movie's most memorable scene depicts Patricia's lurid "trip," in which she drops too much acid at a "happening" (party) after a band proto-raps a song about Wonderland. She quite believes she's Alice — as the other characters morph into their Wonderland equivalents for an extended musical sequence, during which she attempts some modern-dance poses, grooves on other costumed characters singing and dancing, sheds some clothes, seduces a danseur (no explana- tion of who he is supposed to be), and engenders a psychodrama freak-out in a nearby room.
The sensational nature of the film caused it to be banned in the United Kingdom. I would ban it too, but only because it's truly unwatch- able, even in a "stoned- out, so bad it's good" way. The completist needs it, of course, and kudos to Geoffrey Chandler for digging it up. Far freakin' out, man.
As to the perpetrators of this unholy mess? Book 'em, Danno
BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING SNARKS?
Doug Howick
If you wanted to introduce a friend or acquaintance to The Hunting of the Snark, what better and easier way to do so than by buying the latest edition? "What's easy about that?" I hear you won- der. But Greek publisher Paravion Press has devised a novel way to give anyone a Fit, with a minimum of Agony on your part.
Paravion Press publishes postcard-sized (15.0 x 10.5 cm) (5" x 4") editions of favorite short literary works that are tailored to be sent by mail. At the beginning is a page "for your correspondence," in case you want to add a few words of your own, and each book comes with its own envelope, so that it's ready to mail with just the addition of a name, an address, and a stamp.
The Hunting of the Snark is one of the latest publications by Paravion Press. With illustrations by Nic Rawling, designed by Will Brady, and set in Linotype Swift by Masterpiece Printers Inc., in New York, it is crisp, clearly printed, and perfectly easy to read. Each of the eight Fits is printed in full, although the dedication inscription to Gertrude Chataway and the preface by Carroll are not included.
Of course, the idea of a small- sized edition of Snark is not new. The first pirated copy of the work,
Seeking the Snark with forks and
hope, by Nic Rawling
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published by James R. Osgood and Company of Boston in 1876, was actually smaller than this latest edition, but it was still a hardcover book rather than a softcover booklet. So also were the many Macmillan, London, Miniature Editions first published in 1910 — and I do have a treasured copy of the Barbara J. Raheb, Tarzana, California, 1981 miniature, which, despite its 57 pages, is a really tiny 2.2 X 1.5 cm! No, this booklet is more similar to the 1960s edition of the Snark published by J. L. Carr of Kettering, Northamptonshire, and reprinted by Quince Tree Press in 2004.
The illustrations by Nic Rawling, whose work was previously unknown to me, are unusual and quite unlike those of any other Snark illustrator. I have lately learned of Rawling's performance collaborative The Paper Cinema, which is part animation and part puppetry, for which Nic cuts out hundreds of images from his own drawings and projects them onto a large screen, to form layered scenes.
The two major illustrations in this publication are just such compositions. The first depicts the Bellman, wearing a folded newspaper boat as a hat and tinkling his bell, within a collage topped by the finger of a hand indicating the way to go. The other features two large forks held by the Butcher (in obligatory ruff and dunce's cap), as well as by the Beaver, in the midst of a selection of strange, creepy, unrecognisable creatures. There are also a few smaller sketches of walking thimbles, scattered into the text, including the front cover.
I like it! Go to www.paravion press.org to order at US $10.00 per copy, or less for multiple sets.
&
Snarked! 0, 1, and 2
Written and illustrated
by Roger Langridge
Kaboom! Studios
A Division of Boom Entertainment
Andrew Ogus
One measure of an author's achie- vement is the lives that his or her characters may be given by the hands of others. Roger Langridge has based his delicious comic book series on two of Carroll's relatively obscure figures: the Walrus and the Carpenter. In the prequel to the series (Issue 0), we are intro- duced to the louche heroes, Wil- berforce J. Walrus and Clyde Mc- Dunk (nice to know their names), and their fellow protagonists, Princess Scarlet and Prince Russell (a.k.a. "Rusty"), the children of the Red King — who has gone off on a mysterious sea voyage.
The book is chock-full of hi- larious drawings and characteriza- tions, but there is also a sense of invisible threat throughout; an excidng adventure is imminent. While aimed at young readers, the comic offers plenty of jokes, puns, and Carrollian references to delight readers of all ages. The back of volume 0 is jammed with fun stuff, including abbreviated versions of The Hunting of the Snark and the original Walrus and Car- penter poem (curiously, with a couple of stanzas left out) , as well as puzzle and game pages, cast sketches, the Jabberwock newspaper ("You Too Can Believe Six Impos- sible Things Before Breakfast"), and the Princess's diary.
The adventures continue in Is- sues 1 and 2, with the appearance of the Cheshire Cat (who has to pay a visit to a girl in Oxford, the Gryphon, more cast members, the number 42 and deeper character- izations and threats to our heroine (who fears only Snarks) and silent hero (well, he's too young to talk). There's a brief section of the origi- nal Snark, which I for one would like to see expanded into its own book. Issue 3 will be out in Decem- ber. I can hardly wait.
Alice's Adventures in NYC
Wonderland — The Text Generation
SMJ Crimp
Illustrated by Arielle Jessup
Hatter Publishing (2011)
Kindle edidon $5.99
Cindy Watter
An amusing, if occasionally pain- ful, conceit, available only on Kindle as of now. As a rule, read- ing a book for review is a pleasant experience. One has an excuse to avoid the tedium and squalor of housework, and lying on a couch, flipping pages is a reassuringly cozy way to spend the day. Obviously, Kindles were not made for some- one like me. The author kindly sent me a link so I could download her book, and I read it on the screen of my computer. I am of an age to associate the computer screen with work, not games or so- cializing. This means that my read- ing experience was excruciating.
But who cares about me? With, at best, twenty-five years of (rapidly declining) spending power left, I am less important than the typical preadolescent. Apparently that is the market for an Alice that has been translated into text-messag- ese. This Alice, like the original, is a dream within a frame story, but with a twenty-first-century Alice (who is somehow related to the original Alice, and I do not know how that is possible unless Mrs. Hargreaves's last remaining son, who accompanied her to New York in 1932, sowed a few too many wild oats on the visit). This Alice (now nine years old, not seven, and extremely oriented to the culture of conspicuous consumption) goes with her mother to Central Park, falls asleep, and the rest is a famil- iar story.
The author kindly provides an epigraph explaining the purpose for this translation: "Sometimes 2 re-tell a gr8 story u hve 2 know the language of th day." Right away there is the problem with th/the — both are used. As if reading the
45
work were not difficult enough, the text-message style of spelling is not consistent. There are, for example, several different spellings for Central Park: CP, C Park, C Prk, Central Prk, etc. "Great" is "gr8" and "grt." "Wonderland" is some- times capitalized, sometimes not. In addition, in the glossary there is confusion with plural, possessive, and contraction. Shouldn't "PIR — Parent's in room" be "Parents"? And shouldn't "YSAN — Your such a nerd" use "You're"? "HHHIS" has no definition. "DL" is defined as "lowdown" but I know that "keep it on the down low" means "keep it a secret." And somehow I don't think "WAB" means "What a bunch." The twenty-first-century Alice likes Justin Bieber, Ralph Lauren's kid's candy store, and "Eliose," who must be Kay Thompson's creation "Eloise."
The actual book is quite close to Carroll's original, and not com- pletely in text message style, thank goodness. I was happy to see that "melancholy" remained in place, a testament to Carroll's (and Crimp's) belief that children can learn a challenging vocabulary.
While I deplore a nine-year-old who wants Christian Louboutin anything, I smiled at the brand- name placement for the three Alice's Tea Shops in Manhattan, and the author thoughtfully en- courages readers to go to the Alice statue in Central Park, and even provides the cross street.
Judging from her e-mail, Susan Crimp is a delightful person, and her pen name is worthy of an Eng- lish Edwardian murder mystery writer. I would love to be able to tell readers that this version of TBBITWWW (the best book in the whole wide world) is an absolute necessity, but it is not. It is an af- fordable curiosity for the collector, and it may well lure a determinedly wired tween into Wonderland. I do appreciate the ONNTA (Oh no not this again) abbreviation; it seems much more ladylike than the fa- miliar BOHICA (bend over here it
comes again). Now I shall lie down in a dark room with a cold rag on my forehead.
*
The Logic Pamphlets of Lewis
Carroll and Related Pieces
Edited by Francine E Abeles
291 pages
LCSNA/University
Press of Virginia
ISBN 978-0-930326-25-8
Sen Wong
INTRODUCTION
The Logic Pamphlets (Volume 4 of The Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll) is a collection of three sets of Dodgson/Carroll's papers, letters, and worksheets: The first set has to do with syllogisms and puzzles arising from the syllogistic forms; the second set has to do with the hypothetical and problems arising from arguments based on hypo- thetical propositions (including replies from other philosophers and logicians); and the third set contains logic exercises and exam- ples for instructional purposes. In addition to a general in- troduction, the volume editor, Francine F. Abeles, has written an independent introduction to every set of the collected papers. All the introductions are written with such clarity that aficionados who are not well versed in the logic discipline are provided with enough basic information to facilitate an appre- ciation of Carroll's logic writings.
1. THE CRAZY 19™ CENTURY: TWO PHENOMENA CURIOSA
A. THE CASE OF GEOMETRY
Let's cut to the chase and go back to the nineteenth century to see what Dodgson's colleagues were doing at the time. Dodgson passed away in 1897; two years later, in 1899, David Hilbert published his Grundlagen der Geometrie {Founda- tions of Geometry, hereafter GG) , which demonstrated a new meth- odology for independence and consistency proofs in geometry, but which was also meant for the entire
classical mathematical enterprise. Gottlob Frege was taken aback by the theoretical "errors" that he read in the book and initiated a correspondence with Hilbert. The younger Hilbert tried to explain his methodologyto Frege but without success, and having grown tired of Frege 's nagging, he ceased correspondence after a few exchanges. Frege wouldn't let it go, however, and started writing two series of articles, both titled Uber die Grundlagen der Geometrie (On the Foundations of Geom- etry) . This was the infamous (if you think that Frege had a mo- mentary lapse of reason) or excit- ing (if you think that Frege was on to something) Frege-Hilbert Controversy, which over a century later is still making noises. But we are not going to talk about the controversy.
The nineteenth century was a crazy century for geometry. Hil- bert's GG may be seen partly as a reaction to just that craziness. During the semester of 1898- 1899, Hilbert taught a course of lectures on Euclidean geometry at the University of Gottingen. The main results of the lectures were later rearranged and pre- sented as a memorial address celebrating the unveiling of the Gauss-Weber Monument at Got- tingen in the early summer of 1899. It seems that GG was not only an attempt to demonstrate a new methodology in doing clas- sical mathematics, it was meant to be a sort of "conclusive" pre- sentation of Euclidean geometry, and such a "conclusive" presenta- tion turned out to be a formal axiomatic system in which things such as points, straight lines, and planes were developed logically. Where did such an urge or need come from?
Entering the nineteenth cen- tury, Euclid's postulates were not so "self-evident" anymore. His notion of postulates was found to be inadequate, and our "Euclid- ean" intuition of space was a little
46
shaky. First there was a Russian mathematician, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1792-1839), who removed the parallel postulate from Euclid's list of postulates. From there, he constructed his non-Euclidean geometry. The Italian geometer Eugenio Beltrami (1835-1900) created a model called a "pseudosphere," which provided an interpretation in which Lobachevsky 's geometry was demonstrated to be (relatively) consistent, whereas Euclid's paral- lel postulate was false — while his other postulates (axioms) were true! At the same time, the Hungarian mathematician Janos Bolyai (1802- 1860) independently worked out a non-Euclidean geometry simi- lar to that of Lobachevsky — not to mention Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866), who constructed a geometry in which the shortest dis- tance between two points was not a straight line.1
Jose Alberto Coffa, a historian of philosophy, has given us this vivid picture of the time:
During the second half of the nineteenth century, through a process still awaiting explanation, the community of geometers reached the conclusion that all geometries were here to stay.2
It is a stunning description. Was there such a happy consensus among geometers in the second half of the nineteenth century? Amid the mushrooming of non- Euclidean geometries, Hilbert probably found it desirable to put Euclidean geometry on a solid modern foundation — a system of axioms set out in GG — on the one hand, and on the other, to dem- onstrate a rigorous way of doing mathematics.
Dodgson was born in 1832. All the major non-Euclidean geom- etries of the nineteenth century were practically invented during his lifetime! But it seems that he paid absolutely no attention to the hustle and bustle of the newfound strangeness of space and time. As
far as geometry was concerned, his focus was Euclidean geometry only. This was the first interesting phenomenon referred to in this section's title.
He certainly was aware of the heretics and their work in geom- etry; in fact, he even wrote about them in a book called Euclid and His Modern Rivals, which took the form of a whimsical dialogue. It was published in 1879 and was a defense of Euclid through the mouths of Minos — sounds Greek, doesn't it? — and Euclid against the "blasphemy" of a professor Nie- mand — sounds German, doesn't it? Indeed, it's German for "nobody." Not only that, but curiouser and curiouser, it sounds almost like the name of the infidel Riemann!
B. THE CASE OF LOGIC
Let's turn now to logic. There was another controversy in England, several decades earlier, although not as famous. As remarked by Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856), the period between John Locke and the early nineteenth cen- tury was quite barren of any real contribution to logic in England. So Hamilton proposed the quan- tification of the predicate (of a subject-predicate sentence type) in the 1850s. It was not a new idea. At least two Gottfrieds had done it: one was Leibniz (1646-1716), the other Ploucquet (1716-1790). Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728- 1777) and Georg von Holland (eighteenth century) had tried it too. Frederic de Castillon (eigh- teenth-nineteenth century) also had quantified the predicate. Even the Englishman George Bentham (1800-1884) quantified the predi- cate in a table of propositions in his Outline of a New System of Logic, published in 1827. Augustus De Morgan (1806-1878), professor of mathematics at the University of London, said rightly that many predecessors had done it already, although Hamilton insisted that it was his innovation. The result was a quarrel that lasted 27 years, from
1846 until the curtain finally fell in 1873.
It was an exciting time in Eng- land. Logic was on its way to be- coming a legitimate independent discipline. Dr. Abeles has already mentioned a few logicians in her introduction; I'll repeat some of those names with additional infor- mation.
De Morgan started writing about logic in 1847 with Formal Logic; or, the Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable. George Boole (1815-1864) published his first book, The Mathematical Analy- sis of Logic, Being an Essay toward a Calculus of Deductive Reasoning, on exactly the same day De Morgan published his Formal Logic. Hav- ing throughout the years changed some of his ideas and refined oth- ers, in 1860 De Morgan published his Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic, which was possibly meant to be a definitive textbook of logic. De Morgan and Boole were the two most important contributors to British logic in this period. Like Hamilton, De Morgan was bent on improving the traditional Aristo- telian logic within the framework of the categorical syllogisms. For example, his first move was to en- large the number of propositional types by manipulating all the com- binations and distributions of two terms and their negations. The so- called De Morgan's Laws are essen- tially laws of distributions. But he introduced also the notion of an arbitrary and stipulated "universe of discourse," and that has turned out to be enormously significant. We shall come back to this when we talk about Carroll's attitude towards the existential import of universal propositions.
In the case of Boole, his major work was An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on ivhich Are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probability, which was published in 1854. Abeles has rightly pointed out that he was "algebraizing logic, i.e., rewriting syllogisms in a new notational system rather than in-
47
venting a new logical calculus." However, he made a breakthrough by giving the old logic a purely extensional interpretation. Terms (small letters) are now treated strictly as classes of objects or things. Symbols such as " + ", " — ", and "X" serve as binary operators. Boole's algebra of logic is a simple and elegant system that is also very intuitive. In fact, Boole's own pre- sentation was axiomatic, though not rigorously axiomatic.
Nonetheless, it was complained that Boole's algebra was not so much a system of logic as an al- gebra of the numerals 1 and 0, meaning Boole's algebra is not "logical" enough. One person who held such an opinion was William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882). For Jevons, the real glitch was that Boole's system was a calculus of objects (or things) taken in their extension. So he set out to sort of rework Boole's algebra, and the result was, in his own words, a calculus of terms in intension. For some reason, Jevons 's logic is not studied anymore. As C. I. Lewis (1883-1964), his colleague across the Atlantic, commented, "On the whole Jevons' methods are likely to be tedious and have little of math- ematical nicety about them."3
Lewis's predecessor Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who was largely unknown in his lifetime, was an original mind in many disciplines. His contributions ranged over mathematics, geodesy, metaphysics, logic, semiosis, theory of reasoning, and much more. In logic alone, his ideas were so many and so original that it's not pos- sible to hint at anything in a sen- tence or two. I shall take a risk and mention just what I think is the gem (next to his theory of signs) of Peirce's fully mature mind. Late in 1896, he invented a system of existential graphs (EG), a system of logic diagrams, neglected for over half a century, which was worked out (alpha and beta) for the first time from his manuscripts by Don D. Roberts in the 1960s and finally
published in the 1970s. EG not only can express and deduce Ar- istotle's syllogisms, it can handle predicate logic quite well. There are three parts in EG: the alpha part for pro positional logic, the beta part for quantificational logic, and the gamma part for modal logic. EG constitutes an effective topological graph method of proof that is highly visual, and it is ex- actly because of this visual aspect of the system that EG seems to have a quality of reflecting how we "per- form" reasoning.
From the "new" world, we move back to the "old" world, and our story has come full circle. The father of first-order logic was busy as a bee developing his new system of logical notation (Begriffsschrift or Conceptual Notation). In paper after paper, he tried to clarify the extremely important concept of function; in order to set a founda- tion for arithmetic, he analyzed deeply the concept of number (Grundlagen der Arithmetik or Foun- dations of Arithmetic). After years of laying this foundation, he finally made his move, and in Grundg- esetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic), he used his new logic to construct a solid foundation for arithmetic (the backbone of clas- sical mathematics, of course), only to see his foundation collapsed by a letter from a young man from England. That young man was Bertrand Russell, and in the letter was a paradox that was later known as Russell's Paradox.
Here's the second unusual phenomenon. In such an exciting time, when British logicians were trying to algebraize Aristotelian logic, when American logicians were dissatisfied with the limita- tion of the categorical propositions and the syllogistic argument types, and when the German Frege was inventing a theory of quantifica- tion and creating a new logic, why did Dodgson adhere to Aristotelian logic, in exactly the way he clung to Euclidean geometry despite the blossoming of new geometries?
It is certainly not unusual for some scholars to cling to an orthodox or traditional posi- tion in some discipline within a certain period of time. The above two questions arise from the intertwining of two contexts. If I'm successful in presenting a vivid picture of the activities of the geometers and the logicians of the nineteenth century, the reader should have sensed the intellectual richness, adventure, and invention of the time, in at least those two fields. But what really makes a student of Dodg- son scratch her head is that, if he had a philosophy of language at all — as I think he did — it was a very modern one. ' His attitude towards language (natural lan- guage at least) was quite flexible. He certainly understood that language is an artifact. The Witt- gensteinian slogan "the meaning of a word is its use" applies per- fectly to the Alice books. Dodgson anticipated Wittgenstein and preceded all the ordinary lan- guage philosophers of the 1930s and 1940s. Dodgson was no dog- matist. Evidence was strewn every- where throughout the Alice books that he was fully convinced that language can be used to do many different things and that there is no such thing as the inherent meaning of a word. If he could embrace such an open attitude towards language, why couldn't he accept at least the possibility of a non-Euclidean geometry and a non-Aristotelian logic, especially a logic that goes beyond categori- cal sentences? What could be the stumbling block?
My best guess would be his religion. Dodgson was ordained as a deacon of the Anglican Church (1861), though he never took holy orders and he also seemed to have doubts about that particular theology. Some of his diary entries point to his deep personal sense of "sinfulness,"
48
perhaps to a degree unusual for the average Christian. It seems that such a deep sense of sin required a deep sense of religiosity. If so, it is possible that Dodgson could not imagine a God who would have created more than one kind of space or more than one logic, when the Christian God is com- monly referred to as the Absolute. There can't be two geometries, and in the case of logic, Kant's famous mistaken claim that Aristo- tle's logic was a complete science must be right. Is this what stopped Dodgson 's unusually creative mind from going beyond the Aristotelian syllogistics? This might be a good research topic for Carrollians.
2. EXISTENTIAL IMPORT
Once Dodgson 's adherence to Aristotelian logic is set as a back- ground, his adherence to similar treatment of the universal categori- cal propositions follows naturally. The traditional square of opposi- tion originating with Aristode reveals logical relationships among the four types of categorical sen- tences A (Every S is P) , E (No S is P), I (Some S is P), and O (Some S is not P), as conceived by Aristode. The most controversial and criti- cized relationship in the twentieth century was probably the relation of subalternation between A and I (and also E and O). Aristotle thought that if every S is P, then some S must be P. This is the so- called "existential import" of the universal (affirmative) sentences. But he made this assumption for a reason, actually an ontological reason. There is a fundamental dif- ference between Plato's philosophy and Aristotle's philosophy. Unlike his teacher Plato, who was con- cerned with ideas and the abstract mathematical realm, Aristotle was more down to earth and was con- cerned more with the realm inhab- ited by individuals (objects). I'm not prepared to say that Aristotle didn't have a concept of the empty domain or a universe of discourse that is empty, but it seems that his
ontology assumes a non-empty universe. In a non-empty universe, A implies I would look natural. If every S is P, then it should be true that at least some S is P. In the case of Aristotle, his ontology enforces the relation of subalternation, i.e., the existential import of universal sentences.
In the case of Dodgson, if he subscribed to Aristotle's ontology and assumed that there could only be one logic, his acceptance of the existential import of universal cat- egorical sentences is obvious. But there is a technical reason for him to assume the existential import of universal categorical sentences. It has been touched upon by Abeles in highlighting Hugh MacColl's (1837-1909) criticism of Dodg- son's Symbolic Logic, Part I,a and I shall add a few words in that re- gard. In the Eighth and Ninth Papers on Logic, Dodgson asks his readers to bear in mind the assumption:
That the proposition "all x are y" is the sum total of the two propo- sitions "some x are yn and "no x are not /'.'■
If you look at this definition of A, there is a surprising lack of intuitiveness, and it certainly is not "natural." I suspect that this defini- tion was a result of the way he con- structed his logic diagrams.
Let us go to Carroll's biliteral diagrams.7 The I proposition is given the following definition:
Now, how do we define an A proposition such as "all x are y"? All we have to do is to combine the above two diagrams into one:
|
Some xy exist - Some x are y + Some y are x |
• |
||
It's simple: If some xy exist, we put a dot in the upper-left cell. If there is no x at all, i.e., no x exists, put a circle in the upper-left cell and another in the upper-right cell, as below:
|
No x exist |
|
|
o |
o |
All x are y
|
• |
o |
Since all x are y, xy' must be empty; hence, a circle in the upper-right cell is a must. But we still have to show that all x are y. In Dodgson 's notation, nothing else could be done except by putting a dot in the upper-left cell. This would mean that everything that is x is also y. The problem is, the dot is an existential symbol. The existential import of the A proposition is thus smuggled in. In this notation, there is no way the A proposition does not carry some existential implication irrespective of Carroll's ontological inclination. Therefore, in Carroll's logic diagram notation, existential import is indeed a technical problem.
Furthermore, if we compare Carroll's verbal and diagrammatic definitions of the A proposition, the intuitiveness that the former lacks immediately reveals itself vividly in the latter. It appears that the influence of his diagrammatic notation on his logical investiga- tion cannot be underestimated.
Apart from that, Carroll prob- ably didn't envisage the close and tight relationship between logic and mathematics. It is necessary for mathematics to handle empty domains, and the same goes for logic. Nowadays, we know that universal propositions do not necessarily have any existential import, thanks partly to De Mor- gan's introduction of the concept of "universe of discourse," with which we can specifically indicate an empty universe, and partly to the introduction of quantifiers by Peirce and Frege independently.
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Let <t> and T be predicates, x and y individual variables, and the A proposition can have two variants in the language of first-order logic. If we restrict our universe of dis- course to everything that is <J>, 'Vx IV would mean everything (viz. <t>- thing) is a T-thing. But if we do not restrict our universe of discourse, we can write ' Vx (Ox D Tx) ' which would mean the same, i.e., every O-thing is a T-thing, or, in more clumsy wording, for all things, if it is a O-thing, it is also a T-thing. Obviously, "All superheroes wear speedos or tights" does not imply the existence of some speedo/ tights-wearing superhero (s), for the simple reason that superheroes constitute an empty domain!
The interesting thing to be noticed here is that the A proposi- tion can be written as a conditional (or hyperthetical), in which the antecedent (protasis) helps to set the domain for the conditional. Talking about hypothetical, it's time to move onto the last section of this essay.
3. THE HYPOTHETICAL
What was Dodgson's view on the hypothetical? I have the impres- sion that Dodgson could not quite make up his mind on the matter — that's why he kept writing puzzles and paradoxes using hypothetical sentences. So I'm not going to answer that question here. Instead, I'll talk a litde bit about his A Dis- puted Point in Logic* and use it to clarify a few things, to enhance the pleasure of reading the second set of papers in the presently reviewed book.
Dodgson presented A Disputed Point in Logic, dated 1894, in the following manner:
DP: There are two propositions,
A and B.
Let it be granted that If A is true, B is true ... (i)
Let there be another Proposi- tion C, such that If C is true, then if A is true B is not true .... (ii)
According to Abeles, "This is the first of a series of sheets Dodg- son had printed on the Barbershop Paradox." This, then, seems like a good place to begin.
First of all, this type of argument was nothing new even in Dodg- son's time. The Megarian School of 4 BCE was very fond of this type of argument. A common method of disputation used by those Mega- rian philosophers was a combina- tion of reduction ad absurdum with conditionals (or hypothetical). If an opponent made a claim or assumption P, it would not be un- common for a Megarian philoso- pher to construct an argument of the following form:
MA: If P then Q, if P then ~Qj therefore P is not possible.
What the Megarian philoso- phers wanted to argue was that if we can infer both 'Q' and *~Q' from 'P\ 'P' cannot be possible; i.e., 'P'cannot be asserted. DP looks very much like a version of MA, but does it really?
Let's look at DP one more time. First we have two propositions, A and B. Then we assume (i). But what is (i)? The formulation of (i) dangerously borders on a confu- sion of object language with metalan- guage, the same problem that had haunted philosophers and logi- cians since almost the beginning of ancient Greek philosophy, until Tarski and Carnap started clearing the muddy waters in the early part of the twentieth century. Literally, (i) is a conditional whose anteced- ent is "A is true," and its conse- quent is "B is true." Let us call this literal reading (i)':
(i)' If (A is true), then (Bis true).
The original "trick" conceived by Dodgson was that (i) was sup- posed to be:
(i) if A then B
in which A is true, whereas B is also true. Philo the dialectician from the Megarian School had
already given a material inter- pretation of the conditional such that a conditional is construed as false where the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. When the antecedent is false, whether the consequent is true or false does not matter; the condi- tional is construed as true. And of course, where the antecedent and the consequent are both true, the conditional is construed as true. Now in (i), Dodgson wanted to insist that A be true and B be true among the three possible cases in which (i) can be construed as true. This is one source of the trouble.
However, under our literal in- terpretation, the two conditionals can be laid out as follows:
(i) ' If (A is true) , then (B is true).
(ii)' If (C is true), then [if (A is true), then (B is not true)].
Let us introduce a "1" to stand for true and a "0" to stand for not true, so that the following pre- sentation will be clear. We now know that a conditional can be construed as true in three cases, so (i)' can have a "1" when we as- sign a "0" to both (A is true) and (Bis true).9
Next, we move on to the sub- conditional of (ii)', i.e., [if (A is true), then (B is not true)]. Since we have assigned a 0 to (A is true) in (i)', we assign the same value (that is, 0) to (A is true) in (ii)'. Since (B is true) in (i)' is assigned a 0, we cannot assign the same value to (B is not true) in (ii)'; instead, we give it a 1. It means that for the subconditional of (ii) ', the antecedent has a 0, and the consequent has a 1; hence, the entire subconditional should be assigned a 1.
Since the subconditional is the consequent of (ii)' and it has the value 1, the entire (ii)' has to be assigned a 1 for the same reason, irrespective of the truth value of its antecedent, which is (C is true).
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The funny thing is that the truth values of A, B, and C may be irrel- evant under our literal interpreta- tion. If Dodgson wanted DP to be a sort of logical puzzle, a careful reformulation would be a start.
1 Edna E. Kramer. The Nature and Growth of Modern Mathematics. Princeton University Press, 1981, Chapter 3. It is said that the mathematical giant Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) discovered similar results to those of Lobachevsky and Bolyai. If you wish to push further, there was an Italian priest, Girolamo Saccheri (1667- 1733), who actually discovered Lobachevskian geometry without knowing it in the course of trying to prove Euclid's parallel postulate in 1733.
8 Alberto Coffa. "From Geometry to Tolerance: Sources of Conventionalism in Nineteenth- Century Geometry," in Robert Colodny, ed. From Quarks to Quasars: Philosophical Problems of Modern Physics. University of Pittsburg Series, Vol 7, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 3-70.
:! C. I. Lewis. A Survey of Symbolic Logic (originally published by the University of California Press in 1918). Dover Publications, Inc., 1960, 78.
1 Sen Wong. Hijacking Alice:
Underground Logic and Mirror-image Language, in Chinese and to be published in 2011.
5 The Logic Pamphlets of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Related Pieces, ed. Francine F. Abeles, Vol 4 of The Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll. NY: The Lewis Carroll Society of North America, 2010, 5.
6 Ibid., 228. There is a similar assumption concerning E and O sentences. I shall talk only about the A and I case as an example.
7 Ibid. I assume that the reader is familiar with Carroll's logic diagrams; if not, pages 54—55 of The Logic Pamphlets would suffice for an understanding of the coming explanation in this section of the paper.
K The Logic Pamphlets, 112.
9 We are considering only one combination of truth values, viz. antecedent (0) and consequent (1), as an example in our discussion.
FORGOTTEN THE ENGLISH?
Alice au pays des merveilles
Lewis Carroll
Illustrated by Alain Gauthier
Translated by Jacques Papy
Rageot Editeur
1991
ISBN: 2700211529
Alice au pays des merveilles
Lewis Carroll
Illustrated by Rebecca Dautremer
Translated by Sophie Koechlin
Hachette/Livre/
Gautier Languereau
2010
ISBN: 2013933762
Andrew Ogus
Approaching a translation of a book one knows well in one's na- tive tongue with only a rudimen- tary knowledge of the other lan- guage is almost like a dream; the scenes are familiar, the characters recognizable, yet everything is new; we grope for meaning and find it in memory. Alas, though myjunior high school crush on the beautiful Mme. Bass carried me far in higher grades, my grasp of French is now insufficient to make a good com- parison of these two translations of
Alain Gauthier 's elegant Cheshire Cat. Note the equally elegant flamingo.
Wonderland. So I will skip over the conversations and concentrate on the pictures.
Freed from Anglo-Saxon at- titudes, Alain Gauthier plays freely with the text, creating ef- fective, dreamlike conjunctions of characters and ideas (though I don't know exactly what they are). His adult Alice floats naked but shod in the arms of the Hat- ter, Hare, and Dormouse; em- braces the Caterpillar in one of the few in-text sketches; wears a bathing to dance in the arms of a louche, seductive Lobster with seeing eye claws; moons the King and Queen and their jurors. The Three of Clubs is painting a Mona Lisa-like portrait of our heroine, delicately reddening the roses that turn his painting into a playing card; the numer- als 5 and 7 are incorporated into his brilliantly colored doublet. The full-page illustrations are sharp, flat, surreal, and almost completely satisfying. Some situa- tions rate more than one picture, the first seeming to spring from Alice's mind, only to be replaced with a disappointing reality. Thus the Dormouse initially appears with a remarkable resemblance to Mickey Mouse, but a few pages later, at the tea table, he is "real," though with a catlike face. A few line drawings in bright colors break up the double-columned, closely set type here and there.
Like Tenniel, Rebecca Dau- tremer bases her Wonderland firmly in reality — but the reality of a dream, where impossible situations become possible and ordinary. Her Alice, recogniz- ably based on Carroll's photos of the child Alice Liddell, moves through a gorgeously painted Wonderland of rich, suggestive background color and rich, sug- gestive background architecture. Look for the telling details: a sign advertising croquet, an observant
51
ant. The hall of the Pool of Tears looks like an old factory, with beau- tiful arching roofs and numbered doors; Alice almost bursts out of a flimsy summer porch in the White Rabbit's house; the porcine Duchess's kitchen is a shambles of toys, books, and utensils. The Tea Party is held under a glass canopy dangling with tea bags carefully labeled in French, but the "No Fishing/Swimming/Ice Skating/ Picnicking" sign in the scene of the fleeing Caucus racers is in English.
Every aspect of this book is a pleasure, even with a limited grasp of the language. The type is