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THE LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
NUMBER 70 WINTER 2002
Vovpnl Mnht^: Cljt Crans(lator's( ^rt
MORS lABROCHII
COESPER erat: tunc LUBRICILES ULTRAVIA CIRCUM URGEBANT GYROS GIMBICULOSQUE TOPHI: MOESTENUl VISAE BOROGOVIDES IRE MEATU: ET PROFUGI GEMITUS EXGRABUERE RATHAE.
O FUGE lABROCHIUM, SANGUIS MEUS! ILLE RECURVIS UNGUIBUS, ESTQUE AVIDIS DENTIBUS ILLE MINAX. UBUBAE FUGE CAUTUS AVIS VIM, GNATE! NEQUE UNQUAM FAEDARPAX CONTRA TE FRUMIOSUS EAT!
VORPALI GLADIO IUVENIS succingitur: HOSTIS MANXUMUS AD MEDIUM QUAERITUR USQUE DIEM: lAMQUE VIA FESSO, SED PLURIMA MENTE PREMENTl, TUMTUMIAE FRONDISSUASERAT UMBRA MORAM.
CONSILIA INTERDUM STETIT EGNIA MENTE REVOLVENS: AT GRAVIS IN DENSA FRONDE SUSUFFRUS ERAT, SPICULAQUE EX OCULIS lACIENTlS FLAMMEA, TULSCAM PER SILVAM VENIT BURBUR lABROCHIl!
VORPALI, SEMEL ATQUE ITERUM COLLECTUS IN ICTUM, PERSNICUrr GLADIO PERSNACUITQUE PUER: DEINDE GLAUMPHATUS, SPERNENS INFORME CADAVER, HORRENDUM MONSTRI RETTULIT IPSE CAPUT.
VICTOR I ABROCHll, SPOLIIS INSIGNIS OPIMIS RURSUS IN AMPLEXUS, O RADIOSE, MEOS!
o FRA8IOSE dies! CALLO clamateque calla!
VIX POTUIT LAETUSCHORTICULARE PATER.
COESPER erat: TUNC LUBRICILES ULTRAVIA CIRCUM URGEBANT GYROS GIMBICULOSQUE TOPHI; MOESTENUl VISAE BOROGOVIDES IRE MEATU; ET PROFUGI GEMITUS EXGRABUERE RATHAE.
GABERBOCCHUM
HORA ADERAT BRILIGI. NUNC ET SLYTHAEIA TOVA PLURIMA GYRABANT GYMBOLITARE VABO; ET BOROGOVORUM MIMZEBANT UNDIQUE FORMAE, MOMIFERIQUE OMNES EXGRABUERE RATHI.
"cave, GABERBOCCHUM MONEOTIBI, NATE CAVENDUM (UNGUIBUS ILLE RAPIT. DENTIBUS ILLE NECAT.) ET FUGE JUBBUBBUM, QUO NON INFESTIOR ALES, ET BANDERSNATCHAM, QUAE FREMIT USQUE, CAVE.
ILLE AUTEM GLADIUM VORPALEM CEPIT, ET HOSTEM MANXONIUM LONGA SEDULITATE PETIT; TUM SUB TUMTUMMI REQUIESCENS ARBORIS UMBRA STABAT TRANQUILLUS, MULTA ANIMO MEDITANS.
DUM REQUIESCEBAT MEDITANS UFFISHIA, MONSTRUM PRAESENS ECCE! OCULIS CUI FERA FLAMMA MICAT, IPSEGABERBOCCHUS DUMETA PER HORRIDASIFFLANS IBAT, ET HORRENDUM BURBULIABAT lENS!
TER, QUATER, ATQUE ITERUM CITE VORPALISSIMUS ENSIS SNICSNACCANS PENITUS VISCERA DISSECUIT. EXANIMUM CORPUS LINQUENS CAPUT ABSTULIT HEROS QUOCUMGALUMPHAT MULTA, EXDMUMQUE REDIT.
"tune GABERBOCCHUM POTUISTI, NATE, NECARE? BEMISCENS PUER! AD BRACHIA NOSTRA VENI. O FRABIUSCE DIES! ITERUMQUE CALOQUE CALAQUE LAETUS EO" UT CHORTLET CHORTLA SUPERBA SENEX.
HORA ADERAT BRILIGI. NUNC ET SLYTHAEIA TOVA PLURIMA GYRABANT GYMBOLITARE VABO; ET BOROGOVORUM MIMZEBANT UNDIQUE FORMAE, MOMIFERIQUE OMNES EXGRABUERE RATHI.
JUBAVOCUS
TORRIDA NONA FERE EST; TRIVIORUM IN GRAMINE TOVES GYRANTESTEREBRANT,GREX AGILUBRIS, HUMUM; STENT BOROGOVl HABITU TRINUTI SOLARIA lUXTA, VOCE VAGAECURRUNT MUBILIENTE RATAE.
lUBAVOCUM, FILI,CAVE FORMIDABILE MONSTRUM, HORRIDUS ET MALE MORDET ET UNGUE RAPIT; lUBIUBA VITANDA EST OMNI RATIONE VOLUCRIS, TERRIBILl ET FORMA FRUMEUS HARPIRAPAX.
VORTALEM GLADIUM DEXTRA TENET ILLE PREHENSUM MANXOSAMQUE DIU QUAERIT UBIQUE FERAM; DENIQUE TUMTUMMAE REQUIESCIT IN ARBORIS UMBRA ET GRAVE SUSCEPTUM MENTE REVOLVIT OPUS.
PLURIMA DUM STOMACHAX VERSAT, VENIT ECCE TREMENDUS,
CUI DIRO IGNE MICANT LUMINA, lUBAVOCUS!
PER NEMORA HORRENDO RUIT UT TELGENTIA FLATU!
UT REBOANT VOCIS BULBURIENTE SONO!
"hoc CAPE, ET HOC ITERUM!" SIC ICTIBUS ADIICIT ICTUS ET GLADIO CREPITANS TERQUE QUARTERQUE FERIT. VULNERIBUS CONFECTA CADIT FERA, ET ILLE QUADRUMPHANS CUM CAPITE ABSCISO VICTOR AB HOSTE REDIT.
"aNNE TUA eat VERO MONSTRUM VIRTUTE SUBACTUM? DEM TIBI COMPLEXUS, O RADIOSE PUER!"
EXALTANS PATER , "euge! Kq^xIk KaXXiota FREMINNAT
"O lAM I AM PHILACRIS NEC SINE LAUDE DIES!"
TORRIDA NONA FERE EST; TRIVIORUM IN GRAMINE TOVES GYRANTES TEREBRANT, GREX AGILUBRIS, HUMUM; STENT BOROGOVl HABITU TRINUTI SOLARIA lUXTA VOCE VAGAE CURRUNT MUBILIENTE RATAE. Jet)t"'4'A
TAETRIFEROCIAS
HORA COCTAVA PER PROTINIAM TEREMELES LIMAGILES TERETANT ET QUOQUE GYRIROTANT; SUNT TENUISCOPI MACRILLI; SAEPEQUE VIRCI EDOMIPALI ETIAM VOCIBUS ERUDITANT
"semper faccaveas, mi FILI, TAETRIFEROCEM, MORSU QUI LANIAT, UNGUIBUS ET LACERAT! TE PROCUL INCURSU VOLUCRIS RECIPE ORBIIUBAT DEVITAQUE ITIDEM SILVIRAPUM FRUMIUM!
DEXTRA VORPALEM GLADIUM TUNC VIBRAT ET EF HOSTEM DIRIFICUM QUAERITAT ILLE DIU - ARBOREM INERS PROPE TUMTUMI AM ST ANS TUM REQ' SECUM PAULISPER RES VARIAS REPUTANS
DUMQUE MANET, CONCEPT AQUE MENTE SUBARVI A FINI TAETTRIFEROX, FLAMMASEICIENS OCULIS, PER SILVAM BLATERANS ARGUTAT TURMIDULOSAM, ET PROPIUS VENIENS BURBULAT ASSIDUE.
" HOC cape! ET ID CAPE!" SIC PENITUS PER TAET VORPALEM GLADIUM PERNICIENS ADIGIT! PROSTRATUM SIC EXANIMUMQUE DEINDE RELINQUIT, ET CAPITE ARREPTOCURSIOVANS REVENIT.
"tune OFFERRE NECEM QUIVISri TAETRIFEROCI? TE SINE COMPLECT AR, PRAEHILARIS lUVENIS!
TEMPus VERO laudificum! dic "euge, triumphe!"
INGENIO ELATUS LAETITIA FRITULIT.
HORA COCTAVA PER PROTINIAM TEREMELES LIMAGILES TERETANT ET QUOQUE GYRITOTENT; SUNT TENUISCOPI MACRILLI; SAEPEQUE VIRCI EDOMIPALI ETIAM VOCIBUS ERUDITANT.
GABROBOCCHIA
EST brilgum: TOVI SLIMICI IN VABO tererotitant; BROGOVI SUNT MACRESCULI, momi rash STRUGITANT.
"FUGE GABROBOCCHUM, FILI MI, QUI FERO LACERAT MORSU; DIFFIDE IUBIUBAE AVI; ES PROCUL AB UNGUIMANU!"
VORPALEM ENSEM EXTULIT; HOSTEM QUAESIVIT MANXIMUM - TUMTUMI STIRPI ASTITIT, ET EXTUDIT CONSILIUM.
SUBTECTIM CONSULTANTS EO, EN, GABROBOCCHUS FLAMMIFER EX LUCOSPRINXIT TULGIDO PERBULLANS USQUE UGRITER.
TUM SEMEL, BIS ET ITERUM VORPALE FERRUM PUPUGIT: NECATI CAPUT EXANIMUM CITUMPHANS RETRO RETTULIT.
"nUM GABROBOCCHUS PERIIT? GAUDIFERUM AMPLECTARTE! DIES FRABIOUSUS! GRAUSTUS SIt!" SUFFREMUIT PRAEHILARE.
EST BRILGUM: TOVI SLIMICI IN VABO TEREROTITANT;
WI SUNT MACRESCULI, ilMI RASTI STRUGITANT.
lABERVOGAS
?ERABAT, DUM ROTITANT TOVI |[rRES ET TEREBRANT VABEM;
~RAE SUNT BOROGES, <f PS^j5jSi.RATHERRES.
ru PRAECAVE, O'i'^^S^TE, IABERVOGEM! QUAE DENTE MORDET/l^feCAPIT UNGUIBUS! JTA lUBElUBRAM VOLUCRE
CITA FRUMIUM RAPANGUE
)VORPALEOMANU, QUAERE SyiHf//'//'..MANXOMIUM DIU: TUNC ARBOREMADJHl^fc^J QUIEVIT ■ STABAT IBI MEDITA(^yT^ro^1PER.
DUM CELSACERBOSIC ANIMO MANET, VENIT lABERVOX, ORBIBUS IGNEIS, SILVAM PER ULTUGEM SUSUFLANS, ET VENIENS CREPISIBRUDEBAT!
BISTERQUE! TUXTAX! per medium FERAE COR MISIT ENSEM VORPALEUM PUER! HANC LIQUIT ENECTAM, FERENSQUE TURPE CAPUT REDIIT GALUMPHANS.
"tune EXSCIDISTI SPONTE IABERVOGEM? PRO Ml RENIDENS GNATE, VENI PATRIS AD pectus! O PHRABDALE tempus! EUGEPAPAX!" HILARECACHINNAT.
CLARVESPERABAT, DUM ROTITANT TOVI LIMOSALACRES ET TEREBRANT VABEM; DUM TRISTI MACRAE SUNT BOROGES, EGRIBIUNT PROFUGI RATHERRES.
Gala by the Golden Gate
On a gorgeous Autumn day, November 2"'', 2002, San Francisco played host to a gathering of our Society, exactly a decade after our last meeting here. The specific lure this time was the extraordinary exhibit "Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll", curated by Douglas Nickel. The show, a handsomely mounted display of about 75 of Dodgson's works, along with an electronic facsimile of several albums and an adjunct exhibition called "Carroll in Context", has been well-reviewed elsewhere, but the chance to walk among his creations certainly was a grand treat.
The celebration actually had begun the day before at a Maxine Schaefer Memorial Reading at the Town School for Boys. Forty-or-so fourth graders were vastly entertained by a reading by Stephanie Lovett and Mark Burstein (Town School, class of '64), followed by a fine Q&A, in which one of the lads asked about migraines and the /iPF syndrome! They seemed delighted with our gifts of the Books of Wonder edition of the Adventures.
Saturday began with a brunch in the sumptuous Garden Court of the Palace Hotel, an Edwardian gem of a glass-ceilinged garden atrium, which had been completely renovated ten years ago to its 1 909 splendor.
Photo: Alan Tannenbaum
We then walked to the newly opened Koret Education Center at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art, a facility unique in this country in its state-of-the-art multimedia display technology, interactive learning re- sources and facilities (see www.sfmoma.org/education/ edu_inthemuseum_kvec.html).
The meeting began with some announcements from outgoing (in both senses of the term) President Steph- anie Lovett, including upcoming meetings (see "Ravings", p.22 for details). August then read a tribute to Peter Heath (see "In Memoriam", p. 23) and memorial keepsakes were distributed. We held our formal election (also in "Ravings").
Our first speaker was Koen Lien, lead designer of the "Alice's Wonderland" exhibit at the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. (Thank you, Michael Welch, for suggesting him.) San Jose, he reminded us, is a city of one million "at the bottom of the bay", presumably in the geo- rather than oceanographic sense. The museum draws over 300,000 visitors annually. See www.cdm.org.
"Alice's Wonderland: A Most Curious Adventure" was the result of an idea by their developers, which was ftinded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to make an interactive science-based touring exhibition en- couraging imaginative play. (The touring schedule is on p. 4.) Koen took us down the rabbit hole via a slide show — a rabbit hole was, in fact, the only way to get into the exhibit!
This was emphatically an interactive experience, both fiin and educational. Some of the exhibits were:
o The Antipathies — a globe that you could touch, with
a video display that would then show you exactly
what was directly through the earth. ("We learned
that most of the world was made of water," he
remarked.) o Rotating word disks that made "Do cats eat bats"
permutations ("Do gnats treat hats?") o An Ames room of the hall of doorways, with
distorted perspective o A "Mouse's Tale" animation that wiggled like its
homonym o Distorting mirrors
o A praxinoscope (a Victorian parlour amusement) o A video microscope o Murals that take you through the story (and a
zoetrope that brought them to life)
SHERMAN*S LAGOON / P Toomey
I'M PSKIHO
FOR we ^'^
CLOCK.
NO ITS NOT IT'S JUST PERMANENTLY SET TO 23^ THPJ MEANS, TWICE A PAY IT'S EXACTLY RI&HT
AS OPPOSEP TO FILLMORE^ FANCY-SCHMANCY ItlATCH. miCH IS AUtiAYS 5 MINUTES FAST...
o A semi-silvered mirror in which one could see
one's own face morphing into the Cheshire Cat's o A "Tea Party" that demonstrated fluid dynamics
through experiments o A turntable game of the Croquet Ground o Finally, a collection of editions of the book which
children could read or look through
In all, it seemed like great fiin, and we are pleased that children throughout the country will be able to see the Museum's fine work. There was next a small feeding frenzy as Koen sold t-shirts, pens and keychains (with a movable Alice falling down a book-lined well).
There were about sixty of us, so we next split into two groups. One stayed in place to see a film, while the other went to "walk-through" the exhibit with the curator ("the Nickel tour"). An hour or so later, the groups reversed.
Andy Malcolm and George Pastic have been work- ing for several years on this film, shot in digital video, and running about 24 minutes. The last months have been an extra- ordinary crunch of late-nights working on this "labor of love". It was described as a "work in progress", and although Andy, like all artists, can only see what remains to be done, the
rest of us were very much en- ©Children's Discovery
chanted by it. This was its "world premiere"!
The film was shot on the proverbial shoestring, the primary locations being "my friend's garage", the Ontario countryside and Trinity College of the University of Toronto, which looks a great deal like an Oxford college. This description may belie both the look of the film and the fanatical quest for authenticity that drove the filmmakers to attend antique sales, to build their ovm camera as an exact replica of Dodgson's, to take a course in collodion photography, and to reconstruct his sitting-room and dark- rooms to the smallest detail. Almost all the words in the film are CLD's (except a Bible quote), and it is all done in voiceovers. There is no spoken dialogue. The pace is lei- surely, Victorian.
"Sincerely Yours, Lewis Carroll" begins with Dod- gson's musings on New Years Eve, 1 855, having just secured the post of Tutor in Christ Church, and full of misgivings of "great talents misapplied". We next see him around two years later, still long before the publication of the books that made him famous, but at the height of his photographic prowess. We are silent witnesses as he thinks about calculus and the fourth dimension while sitting in a field of cows; looks through a microscope; gazes though his (meticulously reconstructed) photographic album; muses on religious thoughts in a meadow at sunset; sketches from nature (including a frog, a caterpillar, and a mouse); recites poetry;
and other such tableaux.
The high point of the film was certainly the photographing of the Liddell girls, as they had tea with Miss Prickett and a tiny kitten looked down from the branch of a tree with a subtle smile on its face. We see Dodgson creating the famous shot of the three sisters on the couch which, even seen upside down (as the focusing plane of the camera), brought goosebumps. Alice herself was also photographed alone, and we were privileged to listen in on her musings (more of which will be added later).
"Sincerely Yours, Lewis Carroll" is an exceptional production, a sort of time-capsule and glimpse into the mind and world of an extraordinary soul. It is not a "movie" with plot, dialog, and action; rather, it is a stunning y//w. The
filmmakers' current plans are to excerpt some still frames into a book which will be sold with a DVD in the back.
The last presentation of the afternoon, Doug Nick- el's lecture accompanied by slides, took place in the large, elegant Phyllis Wattis theater and was open to the public. The slides he presented were not just of Dodgson's photographs, but others' as well, and paint- ings from the period which illuminated the context. Only someone as devoted to Dodg- MuseumofSan Jose 2002 son's photography as Nickel,
who has spent several years of his life assembling and curating a remarkable exhibition with a superbly produced catalog highlighted by his own scintillating essay, could begin a lecture with the provocative "Lewis Carroll was, in my opinion, one of the biggest losers in the history of the medium."
He continued, "strange as it may seem, I stand before you this afternoon to try and make the case for Dodgson's photographs, not because of, but rather despite the fame of their maker. The aspiration of Dreaming in Pictures is precisely this: to take Dodgson's compositions seriously as pictures, to ask what they might have meant in their original historical and artistic context and to their original audiences. For as surprising as it may be, Dodgson's passion for photography was recognized in every credible biography, from Collingwood in 1898 down to Morton Cohen's book of 1995, but nowhere do we find anyone in the last hundred years asking what these images were act- ually about, what their subjects were, or why their maker was so clearly engaged by them. Once we get past the notion that photography was a mere pastime for Dodgson and acknowledge that he brought the same inventive and complex mind to the conception of these works that he brought to his other endeavors, we begin to appreciate how meaningftil the pictures become, and how th6se meanings taken collect- ively reveal different semantic patterns... To put the case
succinctly, Dodgson's best work is about ideas, not indiv- iduals, and if we are going to make any progress towards illuminating his achievement as a visual artist we have to try to look at it through Victorian eyes rather than our modem sensibilities."'
Readers who wish a greater degree of understanding of Nickel's perspective and who were not privileged to hear his delightful talk are referred to his essay in the catalog.^
The Q&A session of course began with querying him about his opening statement. Nickel explained that CLD's literary fame so outshone his other accomplishments that he was never, until quite recently, taken as seriously as a creative photographer as he deserved. Another question was about his giving up the art form, which Nickel believes was really due in the main to his "having done it all" after 24 years in the medium, said what he wanted to say, and, con- scious of his own mortality, wantingto devote more tune to that which he feh Eternity would judge him by: the Sylvie and Bruno books. (Posterity has proved him wrong.)
We next wandered to the nearby Cartoon Art Museum for a reception. On the walls in their temporary exhibition space was SuperWacky: Animation on Television 1949-2002, displaying vintage production animation eels, drawings and rare painted background art from cartoons, historical ("Crusader Rabbit") to the very contemporary "Powerpuff Girls". In the exhibit hall were a number of pieces of original cartoon art from their permanent collection, including one sketch by David Hall for the (never-made) Disney production of AW (see KL 68, p.2) and a case arranged just for this event displaying "Alice in the Comics". One could see pages of Superman, Batman, MAD, The Thing, The Flash, Santa Claus Funnies, and so on with stories that had used ^Jf -themes or characters. There was food and wine aplenty, and conviviality abounded. We eventually dispersed, saying goodbye to "Everybody's Favorite City", and our guests, who had come from as far away as Japan, began to vanish quite slowly, beginning with
© Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose 2002
the end of their tails and ending with their grins, which remained for a good long time after they had gone.
1. The exhibit will be at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Feb.- May '03), the International Center for Photography in New York (June-Sep. '03), and the Art Institute of Chicago (Oct. '03-Jan. '04).
2. Dreaming in Pictures, Yale University Press, '02, 0-300-09169-9
a mo$t ctirious adventure
October 2002 - June 2003
June 2003 - September 2003
September 2003 January 2004
January 2004 - September 2004
January 2005 -
May 2005
The Children's Museum
Boston, MA
Pittsburgh Children's Museum
Pittsburgh, PA
Strong Museum
Rochester, NY
Minnesota Children's Museum
St. Paul, MN
Young At Art
Davie, FL
May 2005 - September 2005
September 2005 January 2006
January 2006 - May 2006
May 2006 - September 2006
September 2006 January 2007
Port Discovery
Baltimore, MD
Children's Museum of Manhattan
New York, NY
Western Reserve Historical Society
Cleveland, OH
Houston Children's Museum
Houston, TX
Chicago Children's Museum
Chicago, IL
Latin and Greek Versions of "Jabberwocky": Exercises in Laughing and Grief '
August A. Imholtz, Jr.
Few English nonsense verses have been translated into as many foreign languages as Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", that whimsical poem from the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There^. In 1964, Warren Weaver compiled a bibliography of translations of the Alice books in which he listed forty- two versions of TTLG, that is forty-two translations of "Jabberwocky", in some sixteen languages (66-69). During the past twenty-three years many more translations have appeared (Guiliano 226-27). The large number of trans- lations of the Alice books, however, is doubly surprising. Carroll's work, and "Jabberwocky" in particular, is very English in its language, both real and invented, in its figures (consider the St. George motif in the young boy's encounter with the Jabberwock), and in its tone. Furthermore, the problems of turning "Jabberwocky" into another language are prodigious. As Losel observed in his analysis of the earliest German translation of AW: Lewis Carroll puts the translator into a difficult position. He takes language at its word and uncovers secret relations between words. A translator requires reliability and constructiveness and, at the same time, an attitude of aloofiiess to his own product. This precarious balance is almost unattainable for a translator of AW; he must build up an unconventional world and simultaneously undermine it. (76)
Losel 's observation is even more applicable to the nearly understandable unreality of the language of the "Jabberwocky" poem.
After briefly reviewing the origin of "Jabberwocky" and offering some dated, but perhaps still meaningful, criteria for evaluating the translation of nonsensical works, this essay will examine those classical language versions of "Jabberwocky" catalogued by Weaver, together with a few that escaped his notice, and some published after his bibliography.
I "Jabberwocky", as we have it in the first chapter of TTLG (published in December 1 87 1 ), was created in at least two separate phases. Carroll had published privately the initial quatrain — "'Twas brillig. . ." — as "A Stanza of Anglo- Saxon Poetry" in 1855 in Misch-Masch, one of the family journals he wrote, hand-lettered, and illustrated for his brothers and sisters (Collingwood, Picture Book 37). The glosses that he added to the fragment's arcane words in Misch-Masch do not in every case agree with the inter- pretation advanced by Humpty Dumpty, that early master of higher criticism who ended his career through an exercise in deconstruction, in Chapter 6 of TTLG. For example, Carroll gives "gyre" the meaning "to scratch like a dog", whereas Humpty Dumpty says it means "to go round and round like a gyroscope". Perhaps Humpty's explanation reflects his own preoccupation with maintaining his balance. Lewis Carroll's nephew and early biographer, Stuart Dodg-
son Collingwood, proposed the following, obviously erron- eous, origin of "Jabberwocky": "the whole poem was com- posed while Carroll was staying with his cousins, the Misses Wilcox at Whitburn, near Sunderland: 'To while away an evening the whole party sat down to a game of verse-making, and "Jabberwocky" was [Carroll's] contribution.'" (Life and Letters 143). The visit probably occurred in 1855 — the relevant diary being missing — but parts of the poem, like the Anglo-Saxon stanza, may have been composed before then. In any event, the whole poem was not the product of a night's verse making.
As for the word "Jabberwocky", Carroll defined it in a rationalizing, after-the-fact manner, in a letter to the Fourth-Class of the Girls' Latin School in Boston, who had written to Carroll to ask permission to use "The Jabberwock" as the title of their school magazine. He included in his reply granting permission the following etymology: ". . .the Anglo- Saxon word 'wocer' or 'wocor' signifies 'off-spring' or 'fiiiit'. Taking 'jabber' in its ordinary acceptation of 'excited and voluble discussion', this would give the meaning of 'the result of much excited discussion'" (Life and Letters 274).
Aside from pseudo-learned attempts at explaining the origin of the work "Jabberwocky", it does seem likely that the poem's central idea may have been inspired by "The German Shepherd", the English translation of Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Foque's poem published in 1 846 by Menella Bute Smedley.^ Thematic parallels and a few verbal echoes between the two poems argue in favor of "The German Shepherd's" influence upon Carroll's "Jabber- wocky". Furthermore, Smedley was a cousin of Lewis Carroll and the Misses Wilcox, and a cousin whom Carroll frequently met.
The whole question of Smedley's influence is dis- cussed by Roger L. Green in the appendix of his revised version of the Handbook of the Literature of Rev. C. L. Dodgson (Williams and Madan 278-81).
The meaning of "Jabberwocky" is even more dis- puted than its origin, since it obviously had an origin, but does not necessarily have a meaning. Carroll's imaginative compound words and astute use of syntax have made "Jab- berwocky" a classic in the narrow genre of English nonsense poetry. Ordinary language word order and inflectional marks, such as "s" plurals and adjectives ending in "y", define the approximate ftinction of the poem's nonsense words. Words with adjective, noun, and verb inflections occur precisely where one would expect adjectives, nouns, and verbs to be. Nor are the nonsense words patently ridiculous combin- ations of unpronounceable syllables like those aberrations one finds in science fiction and the comics section of the daily newspaper. Alice is thus perfectly justified in assuming that "brillig" and the other terms created by Carroll are words, but simply ones she does not know." The nonsense words conform to the linguistic formula proposed by the American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf for the construction of English words (Farb 261-67; 275-76; see also Whorf 220-32). Needless to say, if the strange words of "Jabber- wocky" confuse little Alice, they cause great difficulties
for those who attempt to translate "Jabberwocky" into foreign languages.
Despite the musings of some twentieth-century French critics, there really is no strict canon for translating nonsense prose or verse. Mn 1797, however, Alexander Fraser Tytler did lay down three rules for translating "ludicrous" verse in a work entitled Essay on Principles of Translation. Tytler describes a species of verse translation that is practiced upon a ludicrous original and seems to be regulated by the laws of translation. The ludicrous effect, he continues, "is increased when the verse is put into an ancient language" (358-59). The laws to be obeyed are:
I. That the translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.
II. That the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the origmal.
III. That the translation should have all the ease of the original composition. (15)
Although translators of "Jabberwocky" may have great difficulty in giving a "complete transcript of ideas of the original work", they should be able to fulfill the other two rules. Let us see.
One of the earliest translations, and certainly the first published one, is the masterly resonant German version "Der Jammerwoch" by the Dean of Rochester, Robert Scott. "Der Jammerwoch" sounds as though it makes sense of the Carrollian nonsense, and therein lies its great appeal. The brilliance of Scott is evident, but some credit should be given to the particular genius of the German language. Even the most arrant nonsense, when translated into German, sounds at least authoritative if not always intelligible.
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"^ic 3^^nc fnicfc^cn, ^Rcallcn Ecot3cn! 33ct»a^r' DOC 3"H"t>-^05cl. tJOC 5cumi6fcn San6ccfc^nat3(^cn!
i^r gciff fcin oorpalf ©c^cocctc^cn ju, ^c fuc^tc long baf manc^fam' iMng; 5>ann, ftct)cn6 untcn Cumtum 33aum, •fpr an-3U-6cnEcn-fin3.
Tllf ftan6 cc ticf in "Jlnfead)! ouf, ^cf 3<^"i"i^co><x^^nf "^ugcn-fcucc ^ucc^ tulgcn XValb mit tOiffcln Cam !Ein burbcln6 Ungc^cucc!
iBinf, 5a>ci! i^inf, 5>»ci! Un6 6uc(^ un6 6urc^ ©cin Docpalf ©c^ojcct 3ccfc^nifcc-fc^nfi(f, tia blieb cf to6t! iSr, tRopf in 6an6, (Bcl^umfig 3og 3urficf.
Unb fc^lugft 15 u ja ben '^ammetxx>cxi)7 Umarmc mic^, mcin 33^^m'fcl)ef !Rin6! (D 5rcu6cn-^ag! (D 6alloo-©(^lQg! i^i: (^octclt fro^-gcfinnt.
iEf briXlig mat. T)k fc^Uc^tc Cot)cn VDirrtcn un6 twimmcUcn in tDabcn; Un6 aUcc-mfimfigc SucggoDcn 5>ie mo^mcn ^2t^' oufgrabcn.
Scott published his translation under the pseud- onym Thomas Chatterton in an article entitled "The Jabber- wock Traced to its True Source" in the February 1872 num- ber of Macmillan 's Magazine.^ At a seance, the spirit of Hermann von Schwindel, a famous Teutonic philologist, had revealed to Chatterton that "Jabberwocky" was merely an English translation of a German ballad by the author of the "Lyar [sic] and Sword". Von Schwindel tapped out the Ur- text, which Chatterton dutifully recorded for publication. So persuasive was the spoof that even many years later peo- ple still occasionally wrote letters to London newspapers proudly announcing their discovery of the "true source" of the "Jabberwocky" poem documented in an article by Thom- as Chatterton. Scott intended his German ballad with its accompanying philological and historical commentary ("Jammerwoch" stands for Napoleon; "Burggoven" for the nobility — a pun on Burggrafen, etc.) to be a parody both of Ossianic poetry and of the reprehensible tendency of some British scholars to consider Deutsche Wissenschaft as the sole model of scholarly method. A few improvements, in the text, however, might be suggested: schlichten for schlichte in line 1; im for in, in lines 2 and 26; and unter 'm for unten in line W; but not am Denken as Williams and Madan falsely correct line 12 (202).
Carroll requested a classical Greek "Jabberwocky" translation from Scott to complement Scott's German version and the admirable Latin one he had received (which we shall discuss below). Scott refiased for unknown reasons (he was clearly able to draft a Greek version, being a co- editor of the unabridged Oxford Greek-English Lexicon). A published Greek version did not appear until decades later. From Carroll's letters to his publisher, we know he was avidly interested in furthering translations of his children's literature (Nowell-Smith 71-77); and the idea of translating "Jabberwocky" into classical languages evidently also appealed to his peculiarly donnish sense of humor.
n
Augustus Arthur Vansittart, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, composed the first known Latin translation of "Jabberwocky" in a room at Trinity on March 10, 1872. His "Mors labrochii" is probably the Latin poem Carroll had in mind when he wrote to Scott for a Greek translation. Classics teachers at the university in ante- xeroxian nineteenth-century England often had copies of their prose and verse translations privately printed and distributed to their students as translation models. Nine years after it was composed, Oxford University Press printed an edition of Vansittart's "Mors labrochii" for private circulation. This version displays wonderfiil fidelity to the original, as Collingwood noted in The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, and overall may well be the best of the Latin versions (144).
Mors labrochii
Coesper erat: tunc lubriciles ultravia circum Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi: Moestenui visae borogovides ire meatu: Et profugi gemitus exgrabuere rathae.
O fuge labrochium, sanguis meus! Ille recurvis Unguibus, estque avidis dentibus ille minax. Ububae fuge cautus avis vim, gnate! Neque unquam Faedarpax contra te frumiosus eat!
Vorpali gladio iuvenis succingitur: hostis Manxumus ad medium quaeritur usque diem: lamque via fesso, sed plurima mente prementi, Tumtumiae frondis suaserat umbra moram.
Consilia interdum stetit egnia mente revolvens: At gravis in densa fronde susuffrus erat, Spiculaque ex oculis iacientis flammea, tulscam Per silvam venit burbur labrochii!
Vorpali, semel atque iterum coUectus in ictum, Persnicuit gladio persnacuitque puer: Deinde glaumphatus, spemens informe cadaver, Horrendum monstri rettulit ipse caput.
Victor labrochii, spoliis insignis opimis Rursus in amplexus, o radiose, meos! O frabiose dies! CALLO clamateque CALLA! Vix potuit laetus chorticulare pater.
Coesper erat: tunc lubriciles ultravia circum Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi; Moestenui visae borogovides ire meatu; Et profugi gemitus exgrabuere rathae.
"Mors labrochii" betrays in its title the central ac- tion of the poem. The whole poem, in elegiac couplets, flows smoothly with its blending of portmanteau words, transliterations, and brilliant inventions such as "egnia mente" for "in uffish thought", which presumably draws "egnia" from a truncated form of segnis, meaning sluggish, just as "uffish" might be derived from muffish. The meaning of labrochus, however, is puzzling. The Latin adjective brochus means "projecting" or "threatening" and is used by Lucilius to describe teeth. If that is the root Vansittart intended, it would leave la as a truncated form of the English Jabber. This is the problem one encounters in trying to determine the roots.
How should the archaic English words such as "gyre" and "whiffling" be translated into Latin? By archaic Latin forms, by Hellenisms, or by Greek terms transliterated in the Roman alphabet? How are the nonsense words to be construed? As portmanteau words with their halves trans- lated accordingly and then combined? Vansittart does create some portmanteau words, but what can be done with the delightful, but to the translator troublesome, "vorpal"? Is not vorpalis, a transliteration rather than a translation, the only possibility? Carroll offers no clue to its meaning. But the commentators on "Jabberwocky" have been ingenious. Alexander L. Taylor thinks "vorpal" was derived from the words verbal and gospel by selection of a letter alternately from each word (81). Eric Partridge finds the origin in a combination of parts of voracious and narwhal (187; see also Sewell 120). Unfortunately, these and other clever
conjectures cannot be demonstrated with certainty. We are left with "vorpal" or "vorpalis".
Vansittart does provide a few scholia in his pub- lished "Mors labrochii". "Coesper" is, he explains, derived from coena and vesper, and thus means, literally, evening- dinner, that is "-the time of broiling dinner, i.e., at the close of the afternoon". His "lubriciles" combines lubricus and gracilis to render rather well the components of "slithy": slimy and lithe. The phrase "sanguis meus" Vansittart surely borrowed from Vergil's "proice Tela / manu, sanguis meus" (j€neid 6.835). And "spoliis insignis opimis" echoes Vergil's "ut insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis ingreditur victorque" (/Eneid 6. S56). These words, spoken by Aeneas's father, parallel the praise offered by the father of the slayer of the Jabberwock. Finally, "informe cadaver" may stem from Vergil's "pedibus informe cadaver protrahittir" {/Eneid 8.264). Vansittart knew his Latin and understood how to turn it to the service of nonsense.
Hassard Dodgson, CLD's uncle and Master in the Court of Common Pleas, composed the next published Latin version of "Jabberwocky". He had been an Ireland Scholar and in his early years studied Latin and Greek verse composition. His translation was never published during his lifetime and appeared first posthumously in 1899 in Collingwood's Lewis Carroll Picture Book (364).
"Jabberwocky" Rendered into Latin Elegiacs
Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et Slythaeia Tova Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo; Et Borogovorum mimzebant undique formae, Momiferique omnes exgrabuere Rathi.
"Cave, Gaberbocchum moneo tibi, nate cavendum (Unguibus ille rapit. Dentibus ille necat.) Et fuge Jubbubbum, quo non infestior ales, Et Bandersnatcham, quae fremit usque, cave.
Ille autem gladium vorpalem cepit, et hostem Manxonium longa sedulitate petit; Tum sub tumtummi requiescens arboris umbra Stabat tranquillus, multa animo meditans.
Dum requiescebat meditans uffishia, monstrum Praesens ecce! oculis cui fera flamma micat. Ipse Gaberbocchus dumeta per horrida sifflans Ibat, et horrendum burbuliabat iens!
Ter, quater, atque iterum cite vorpalissimus ensis Snicsnaccans penitus viscera dissecuit. Exanimum corpus linquens caput abstulit heros Quocum galumphat multa, domumque redit.
"Tune Gaberbocchum potuisti, nate, necare? Bemiscens puer! ad brachia nostra veni. O frabiusce dies! iterumque caloque calaque Laetus eo" ut chortlet chortla superba senex.
Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et Slythaeia Tova Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo; Et Borogovorum mimzebant undique formae, Momiferique omnes exgrabuere Rathi.
Elegiac couplets are better suited to render the English ballad form than many other classical meters. But, unfortunately, this translation is too much of a word-for- word rendering rather than an unreal translation of the
English nonsense into Latin nonsense. The line "Momifer- ique omnes exgrabuere Rathi" (and all the Raths, bearing themselves solemnly, cried out), however, strikes me as rather fitting. The word "mome", taken in the sense of solemn, Dodgson translates with an invented compound mo- miferique incorporating the root of the Latin word momen- tum meaning a matter of weight or importance. The other nonsense and obsolete words simply are given appropriate Latin grammatical inflectional endings, and that is why Dodgson's lines lack the imaginative force of Vansittart's version. Dodgson, like Vansittart, does incorporate some borrowings from the Roman poets in his lines. "Dumeta per horrida" (through the wild-rough thickets) is a fine peri- phrasis for "through the tulgey wood" and echoes Horace's "et horridi dumeta Silvani" (Carmina 3,29,23). And his "ter, quater, atque iterum" in line 7 perhaps should call to mind Vergil's "terque quaterque manu pectus percussit" (i^neid 12. 155). But the ideas of "Jabberwocky", such as they are, have been clothed in schoolboyish Latin; the ease and spirit of the original cannot be discerned m Dodgson's translation. More mventive than Dodgson's exercise in making "Jabberwocky" Latin is the "Jubavocus" of Hubert Digby Watson, published in his little volume More English Rhymes with Latin Renderings in 1937 (3). The translator, a scholar of Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford, entered the Indian Civil Service and retired with the rank of Deputy Commissioner in 1919. In his later years he pub- lished a brilliant Latin translation of Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark titled Venatio Snarcis, but his Latin "Jabber- wocky" is an even better piece of work. Jubavocus
Torrida nona fere est; triviorum in gramine toves Gyrantes terebrant, grex agilubris, humum; Stent borogovi habitu trinuti solaria iuxta. Voce vagae currant mubiliente ratae.
lubavocum, fill, cave formidabile monstrum, Horridus et male mordet et ungue rapit; lubiuba vitanda est omni ratione volucris, Terribili et forma frumeus Harpirapax.
Vortalem gladium dextra tenet ille prehensum
Manxosamque diu quaerit ubique feram;
Denique tumtummae requiescit in arboris umbra
Et grave susceptum mente revolvit opus.
Plurima dum stomachax versat, venit ecce tremendus,
Cui diro igne micant lumina, Jubavocus!
Per nemora horrendo ruit ut telgentia flatu!
Ut reboant vocis bulburiente sono!
"Hoc cape, et hoc iterum!" sic ictibus adiicit ictus Et gladio crepitans terque quarterque ferit. Vulneribus confecta cadit fera, et ille quadrumphans Cum capite absciso victor ab hoste redit.
"Anne tua eat vero monstrum virtu te subactum? Dem tibi complexus, o radiose puer!" Exaltans pater , "Euge! KaXcc)<? KaXXiata freminnat "O iam iam philacris nee sine laude dies!"
Torrida nona fere est; triviorum in gramine toves Gyrantes terebrant, grex agilubris, humum; Stent borogovi habitu trinuti solaria iuxta Voce vagae currunt mubiliente ratae.
Again the meter is elegiac distichs. As for the difficuh words, Watson copes in several ways. In some cases he translates into Latin the definition of the nonsense word provided by Carroll or by Humpty Dumpty. Thus "brillig" is rendered by "torrida nona" — ^the torrid third hour before sunset — because "brillig" means, according to Carroll, "the time of broiling dinner, i.e, the close of the afternoon" (Gardner 191). "Slithy", a compound of slimy and lithe, becomes in Latin "agilubris" probably from agilis meaning nimble or lithe and lubricus meaning slippery and perhaps by far extension slimy. By simple transliteration Watson makes borogoves "borogovi". And he created neologisms; "mubiliente" is hard to explain otherwise. Finally, he resorts to Greek for the dramatic "Callooh! Callayl": KaXd)<r KaXXioxa, and fittingly so.
Almost fifty years after the appearance of Watson's Latin "Jabberwocky", Clive Harcourt Carruthers, who had already translated AW into Latin, published Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus in 1968. Carruthers, a former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, was then Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages at McGill University in Canada. He provides two versions of "Jabberwocky" in his translation: "Taetrifer- ocias" in Chapter 1, and "Gabrobocchia" in an appendix. I know of no other translator who has published two com- pletely different Latin versions of "Jabberwocky". Taetriferocias
Hora coctava per protiniam teremeles Limagiles teretant et quoque gyrirotant; Sunt tenuiscopi macrilli; saepeque virci Edomipali etiam vocibus eruditant.
"Semper fac caveas, mi fili, Taetriferocem, Morsu qui laniat, unguibus et lacerat! Te procul incursu volucris recipe orbiiubatae, Devitaque itidem silvirapum frumium!"
Dextra vorpalem gladium tunc vibrat et effert: Hostem dirificum quaeritat ille diu - Arborem iners prope tumtumiam stans tum requiescit, Secum paulisper res varias reputans.
Dumque manet, conceptaque mente subarvia fingit,
Taetriferox, flammas eiciens oculis.
Per silvam blaterans argutat turmidulosam,
Et propius veniens burbulat assidue.
"Hoc cape! Et id cape!" Sic penitus per Taetriferocem Vorpalem gladium pemiciens adigit! Prostratum sic exanimumque deinde relinquit, Et capite arrepto cursiovans revenit.
"Tune offerre necem quivisti Taetriferoci? Te sine complectar, praehilaris iuvenis! Tempus vero laudificum! Die "Euge, triumphe!" Ingenio elatus laetitia fritulit.
Hora coctava per protiniam teremeles Limagiles teretant et quoque gyritotent; Sunt tenuiscopi macrilli; saepeque virci Edomipali etiam vocibus eruditant.
Carruthers' first version, yet another in elegiacs, is neither as creative, I believe, as Vansittart's nor as disappointingly literal as Hassard Dodgson's. Here too the meanings glossed for the nonsense words by Carroll form
8
the basis upon which a comparable Latin nonsense work is created. "Brillig", even more literally than in Watson's version, appears per definitionem "hora coctava". Carruthers turns "wabe" into "protinia" based on Alice's own exegesis in her conversation with Humpty Dumpty. "Vorpalem", the accusative singular case of "vorpalis", is an unimaginative third declension adjective. The title of the poem, however, "Taetriferocias", combines taeter, i.e., hideous, with ferocia, i.e., savagery, in a portmanteau fashion worthy of Carroll himself Here is Carruthers' second try. Gabrobocchia
Est brilgum: tovi slimici
In vabo tererotitant;
Brogovi sunt macresculi,
Momi rasti strugitant.
"Fuge Gabrobocchum, fill mi. Qui fero lacerat morsu; Diffide lubiubae avi; Es procul ab Unguimanu!"
Vorpalem ensem extulit; Hostem quaesivit manximum - Tumtumi stirpi astitit, Et extudit consilium.
Subtectim consultante eo. En, Gabrobocchus flammifer Ex luco sprinxit tulgido PerbuUans usque ugriter.
Turn semel, bis et iterum Vorpale ferrum pupugit: Necati caput exanimum Citumphans retro rettulit.
"Num Gabrobocchus periit? Gaudiferum amplectar te! Dies frabiousus! Graustus sit!" Suffremuit praehilare.
Est brilgum: tovi slimici In vabo tererotitant; Brogovi sunt macresculi, Momi rasti strugitant. ( 1 32-33)
In this alternate version Carruthers adopts the rhymed accentual rhythm of Medieval Latin verse. The rapid movement of the eight- or nine-syllable lines with their regular rhymes more closely approximates the ballad form of "Jabberwocky" than the elegiac couplets do.
The only extant version of "Jabberwocky" in Alcaics comes from George P. Strugnell, a solicitor in Coburg, Australia, who composed his unpublished "labervogas" many years ago. He has kindly given me permission to print his excellent Horatian version of "Jabberwocky". labervogas
Clarvesperabat, dum rotitant Tovi limosalacres et terebrant Vabem; dum tristimacrae sunt Boroges, egribiunt profugi Ratherres.
"tu praecave, o mi Gnate, labervogem! quae Dente mordet, quae capit Unguibus! vita lubeiubram Volucrem, tu fugita frumium Rapanguem!"
hie, Ense sumpto vorpaleo Manu, quaerebat Hostem manxomium diu: tunc Arborem ad Tumptan quievit - stabat ibi meditans parumper.
dum celsacerbo sic Animo manet, venit labervox, Orbibus igneis, Silvam per ultugem susuflans, et veniens crepisibrudebat!
bis terque! tuxtax! per medium Ferae Cor misit Ensem vorpaleum Puer! banc liquit enectam, ferensque turpe Caput rediit galumphans.
"tune exscidisti Sponte labervogem? pro mi renidens Gnate, veru Patris ad Pectus! o phrabdale Tempus! euge papax!" hilare cachirmat.
clarvesperabat, dum rotitant Tovi limosalacres et terebrant Vabem; dum tristimacrae sunt Boroges, egribiunt profugi Ratherres.
"Vorpaleus" for "vorpal" is not too much different from the previous transliterations. But "celsacerbo animo" for "in ufFish thought" is quite effective, combining celsus, meaning lofty or high spirited, with acerbus, meaning troublesome, to represent two sides of the boy's mind; and "tuxtax" brilliantly recreates the alliterative effect of "snicker-snack" with a foreshortening typical of Latin. "Susuflans" for Carroll's "whiffling" may owe something to Dodgson's "sifflans". And "phrabdale tempus" does approximate the English "frabjous".
m
The history of the publication of the only classical Greek version of "Jabberwocky", insofar as I have been able to reconstruct it, began with a series of articles in the book review column "The Literary Queue", signed only with the initials E.B.O., in the London Morning Post of 1918. The impetus for producing Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" in Greek began with an appeal for Latin translations of the poem. In the May 3, 1918, column, the literary reviewer E.B.O. observed that "it would be a good exercise for a sixth form in the intervals of military training, to make a Latin version of the Carrollian lines which begin: 'Twas brillig. . . '" (4). Readers responded quickly, and on May 17, E.B.O. printed the first verses of the two best versions he had received — the translations by Hassard Dodgson (obviously submitted by some other party) and Augustus Arthur Vansittart's which was erroneously attributed to someone named Sidgwick (5).* In response to queries about the Latin verses, E.B.O. printed the frill text of the Vansittart version on May 21, 1918, together with the request that some British Greek scholar attempt a Greek "Jabberwocky" (5). lAMBPnE lAMBIKni answered the request. It was composed by Ronald Arbuthnot Knox, former scholar of Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, while he was a Classics master at Shrewsbury School, a post he left in December 1916 to serve with the Military Intelligence Division of the War Office. The Greek translation first appeared in the Shrewsbury School magazine Salopian (No. 344, June 15,
1918) and was reprinted in the Morning Post, June 24, 1 9 1 8 (3; see Eyres 24-27). It is not surprising that a Greek version of English nonsense should appear in the Salopian. Shrewsbury excelled in Classical studies to such an extent that the Post's editor concluded his article on the Greek "Jabberwocky" by saying that "dust collected in the (Shrewsbury) Sixth Form Library is found, when chemically analyzed, to consist of Greek particles."
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* KoiKoq. dvTi TOV dTioiKoq. Hesych. Knox's iambic lines brilliantly adapt Greek voca- bulary and style to "Jabberwocky". The poem begins with a genitive absolute, a grammatical substitute for a temporal clause, which means at the time for burning — i.e., "'Twas brillig". Carroll's third-person narrative is changed to second person in these first two lines: you might find slippery toves. "Topha" is either a transliteration of "toves" or a play on the rather obscure word "trochos", found in the minor historian Herodorus, which may mean badger. (Toves, of course, are a species of badger.) The toves are turning about "strub- lounta" and spinning "stromphount" through the shadows — presumably the shadow of the sundial. A terrible torpidity held the Borogoves. "Sothria" combines sathros meaning unsound with nothria meaning sluggishness, which well approximates the thinking in Humpty Dumpty's explanation
of "mimsy" as miserable and flimsy. The raths sang to the raths away from home a short poem. Knox uses "ekgrimma" for "epigramma". This poem, though a translation, seems to maintain more of a classical air than any of the other versions except perhaps Vansittart's. There is something ^schylean about it both in its obscure compounds and high-sounding tone. Also, as the anonymous reviewer pointed out, the dialect is Attic and the iambic verse is the same type used by Aeschylus in the dialogue sections of his tragedies. Knox's version must have uplifted British spirits when it appeared in the Morning Post, though perhaps not quite as much as the account of the death of a contemporary Jabberwock. During the weeks in which the "Jabberwocky" articles were featured in the "Literary Queue" column of the Post there appeared a terse notice of the death of Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious Red Baron.
No translation, however felicitous, can escape being something of a parody. And if "Jabberwocky" itself parodies the simple heroic ballad, the Oxford wrangles of Benjamin Jowett and John Henry Newman, or whatever arcane interpretation the critics propose, then its Greek and Latin versions must be a kind of meta-parody. The translators play a game with Carroll's poem just as Carroll plays a game with his readers throughout the Alice books. The rules of this game require that we, like the author and the translator, maintain a perfect, though short-lived, Humpty Dumpty-like balance upon the narrow wall of language between sense and nonsense. Carroll once remarked of his nonsense verse that "a perfectly balanced mind could understand it" (Sewell 122). The "Jabberwocky" versions of those translators, who are able to maintain a perfect balance between sense and nonsense deserve the praise Max Eastman gave to "Jabberwocky" itself: these verses are superior to most rhymes, not only because of their musical perfection, but because they combine a completer nonsense with a more meticulous possibility. (Lennon 309-10)
Are not "Mors labrocii", Knox's Greek version, and the other classical translations of "Jabberwocky" examples of a completer nonsense? But when translations of "Jabber- wocky" into classical languages fail, they, even more than modem language versions, remind one of Humpty Dumpty as Alice first perceived him: "eyes fixed in the opposite direction and a stuffed figure after all" (Gardner 261).
Afterword
This article, first published in the Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 41, No. 4, 1987, is reprinted here with permission of the editors of that journal. In personal correspondence of Jan. 29, 1988, the late Peter L. Heath, who thought the article "deserved an audience beyond the bemused readers of the Rocky Moun- tain Review", suggested several corrections which have been incorporated in the article, including replacing "Bander- schnatzen" with "Banderschnatzen" in order to enable the rhyme with "kratzen". Edward Wakeling also offered several corrections.
10
Notes
1. Earlier versions of this paper were read before a meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America on November 5, 1 977, and before the Washington, DC. Classical Society on May 12, 1979. Permission to quote copyrighted "Jabberwocky" translations within the following works is gratefully acknowledged: Macmillan London and Basingstoke, publisher of Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus by Clive Harcourt Carruthers; and Basil Blackwell & Mott Ltd., publisher of More English Rhymes with Latin Renderings by Hubert Digby Watson. George J. Strugnell ofCoburg, Australia, has kindly given me permission (personal correspondence. May 27, 1 978) to print his unpublished "Jabberwocky" version. I would also like to express my thanks to the following individuals: James B. Lawson, Librarian, The Shrewsbury Schools, who sent me a photocopy of Ronald Knox's Greek "Jabberwocky" translation as first published in the Salopian (June 15, 1918); William B. Thompson, Curator of the National Collection of Classical Texts, University of Leeds, who searched, alas in vain, for evidence of "Jabberwocky" having been set as the English passage for the Greek or Latin verse translation examinations at Oxford or Cambridge; and those friends in Washington, D.C. who helped with the "cruces". I am especially grateful for the helpful suggestions of the anonymous reviewer of my manuscript. Any errors of omission or commission are the author's sole responsibility.
2. Of the numerous editions and reprints of TTLG, Gardner's is the most useful and contains excellent notes on some of the translations of "Jabberwocky" (191 -97).
3. Sharpe s Magazine. London: March 7 and March 21, 1846 (298- 309) and (326-28). Shaw raises the possibility, but with little evidence to support it, that "Jabberwocky" may have been influenced by W. E. Aytoun's collection of ballads (9).
4. For a discussion of referential and structural meaning in "Jabber- wocky" see Sutherland (208- 1 0).
5. "Jabberwocky" has appealed to contemporary French translators and critics. Rickard discusses some of the problems of translating Lewis Carroll's works into French (45-66). See also Deleuze.
6. Since 1872 it has been reprinted many times; for example: Collingwood, Picture Book (364-65); Williams and Madan (202); and Gardner (193-94).
7. Proetz (116-18) reprints "Der Jammerwoch" and corrects the following errors made by Williams and Madan in reprinting Scott's translation: "schlichten" should be "schlichte" and "unten" should read "unter'm". "But, somehow," Proetz continues, "Macmillan 's 'Bander- schnatzchen' in the eighth line, which should have been 'Banderschnatzen' seems to have been overlooked. In the first place, the 'Bandersnatch' is very big — almost as big as a dinosaur, for instance — and in the second, 'Banderschnatzchen' does not rhyme with 'kratzen,' which it must have done in the manuscript since all the other rhymes are impeccable" (119).
8. Arthur Sidgwick was a very distinguished scholar, but he is not known to have composed a Latin "Jabberwocky" translation.
Works Cited
Aytoun, William E. Lays of Scottish Cavaliers. Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, 1 849.
. The Ballads of Scotland Edinhur^: Blackwood and Sons,
1858.
Carroll, Lewis, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan, 1872.
Carruthers, Clive Harcourt. Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus. New York:St. Martins, 1966.
Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson. The Lewis Carroll Picture Book. London:T.F. Unwin, 1899.
. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll. London: Fisher
Unwin, 1898.
Deleuze, Giles. Logique du Sens. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1969.
Eyres, Laurence E. In Three Tongues. London: Chapman &. Hall, 1959.
Farb, Peter. Word Play New York: Knopf, 1975.
Gardner, Martin. The Annotated Alice. Cleveland: World, 1963.
Guiliano, Edward. Lewis Carroll: An Annotated International
Bibliography, 1960-76. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
1980.
Lennon, Florence Becker. The Life of Lewis Carroll. New York: Collier Books, 1962.
Losel, Franz. "The First German Translation of Alice in Wonderland". Hermathena 99 (1964): 66-79.
Nowell-Smith, Simon. Letters to Macmillan. London: Macmillan, 1967.
Partridge, Eric, "Nonsense Words of Lewis Carroll". Here. There, and Everywhere: Essays on Language. London: H. Hamilton, 1950.
Proetz, Victor. The Astonishment of Words. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.
Richard, Peter. "Alice in France, or Can Lewis Carroll Be Trans- lated?" Comparative Literature Studies 12 (1975): 45-66.
Smedley, Menella Bute. "The German Shepherd". Sharpe 's Mag- azine. March 7. 21, 1846. 298-328.
Sewell, Elizabeth. The Field of Nonsense. London: Chatto & Windus, 1952.
Shaw, John Mackay. The Parodies of Lewis Carroll. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1 960.
Sutherland, Robert D. Language and Lewis Carroll The Hague: Moulton, 1970.
Taylor, Alexander L. The White Knight. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1952.
Tytler, Alexander Eraser. Essay on the Principles of Translation. London: T Cadell & W. Davis, 1 797.
Watson, Hubert Digby. ''The Hunting of the Snark" Translated into Latin Elegiacs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936.
. More English Rhymes with Latin Renderings. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell &Mott, 1937.
Weaver, Warren. Alice in Many Tongues: The Translations of
"Alice in Wonderland". Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1964.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. "Linguistics as an Exact Science". Language.
Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
Ed. John B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT Press and John Wiley & Sons,
1976.220-32.
Williams, Sidney H. and Falconer Madan. The Lewis Carroll Handbook. Rev. by Roger L. Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
11
Alice in Catalan
Maria Gonzalez Davies Facultat de Ciencies Humanes Traduccio i Documentacio Universitat de Vic, Spain
Introduction
When national literatures are young or peripheral, translation, and especially the translation of children's literature, becomes visible preceding the growth of their own literary corpus. In the case of bilingual countries such as Catalonia, where Spanish and Catalan are the official languages, choosing to translate into the minority language has clear political and ideological implications.
The above can be illustrated with a comparative study of two Catalan translations of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland written at two very different periods by two translators with different styles and aims: Josep Camer (1927) and Salvador Oliva (1996). These translations illustrate the linguistic, ideological and sociohistorical conventions of the Catalan community at given times and the changes it has experienced, corroborating Rita Oittinen's words when she writes about a similar case in Finland: "... situation and purpose are an intrinsic part of all translation ... rather than the authority of the author." (3: 2000). What matters in these contexts is not so much the sacredness of the author as how his or her work can be assimilated by and enrich the receiving culture, especially if it coexists with a majority language.
Two aspects have been examined in both trans- lations: a) the naturalising and foreignising translation strat- egies at the sociocultural and sociotextual levels, and b) the illustrations as a means to underline the translators' choices and political agenda. These relate to Schleiermach- er's (1813/1995) and Goethe's (1819/1995) notions of nat- uralisation and exoticizing, revisited by later twentieth-cen- tury translation theorists such as Lawrence Venuti (1995). A naturalising strategy is adopted when the translator makes the text familiar for the target readers, either by using cultural references close to them (sociocultural level) or by making the language fluent and the translator, invisible (sociotextual level). On the other hand, an exoticizing strategy makes the translator visible and the text "strange", unfamiliar, close to the source language and culture.
The background: visions of Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (\S65) has been adopted by many cuhures in varying degrees through — of course — translation. There may be several reasons for opting for a policy of translation, from the most ideological to the most prosaic: to impose a culture following a colonising attitude or, on the contrary, to open a community to others and bring its culture closer; to fill in voids not only related to literary currents and schools of thought but also to the fields of science and technology; to fight an authoritarian regime by translating unsanctioned ideas either in a majority language or, more subversively, in a minority one such as Catalan; to
add new readings to previous translations or to update their language; or to back up commercial ventures such as publishing fihn screenplays and best-sellers.
Its consequences can also be varied: it can help to shape national literatures and receiving languages, to shape in the sense of closing the receivers' minds when censorship exists or to open mmds when dealing with different thoughts and lifestyles. In short, translation can mirror the source world, shape the target world, and bridge both.
Children's literature can also be interpreted as a mirror and a shaper of its readers and their background. In John Stephens' words: Writing for children is usually purposeful. ..Since a culture's future is, to put it crudely, invested in its children, children's writers often take upon themselves the task of trying to mould audience attitude into 'desirable' forms, which can mean either an attempt to perpetuate certain values or to resist socially dominant values which particular writers oppose. (1992: 3).
This could be taken as the spirit behind translations for children undertaken in Catalonia, especially at the turn of the century. Children's literature occupied a relevant position in the years before 1939: over 20 specialised jour- nals were published between 1 868 and 1935. These included reviews and articles on books written or translated for children in Catalan. In the twenties Catalan authors published many more translations than original works. In Rovira and Ribe's catalogue of children's literature (1972), which covers all children's publications up to 1939, over 100 trans- lations figure from several languages, including Russian, Arabic and Japanese. English, German and French literature were especially favoured to the point that the practice of indirect translation was common, and literature, e.g., in English, was often translated from French texts. After the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) publications in Catalan were forbidden and decreased until the sixties when the Ley de Prensa e Imprenta (18 March 1964) included relevant positive changes to reduce the application of censorship.
Nowadays, translation still occupies a relevant position in Catalan literary publications. In 1999, 10% of all books published in Spain belonged to the category of CYAL [Children's and Young Adults' Literature]; 12.1% were in Catalan (82.3% in Spanish, 2.2% in Basque and 2.3% in Galician). Twelve per cent of these books are translations, of which English is the source language for 63.5% (www. mcu.es).
The translators
Josep Camer and Salvador Oliva represent two different moments in Catalan history and literature and this comes across in their translations.
Josep Camer (1884-1970) belonged to the literary movement known as Noucentisme which characterised the Catalan cultural renaissance in the first part of the 20th century and was based on nationalistic political action. Following the line set by the German Romantics, language was believed to be — and still is — the main sign of identity.
12
and translation was considered as the best means to support the process of creating a national literature. Its main beliefs and aims were to open Catalonia to the world and update its literature and language, mainly through translation; to seek models in the classics and the Middle Ages, the golden age of Catalan culture; and to highlight the pride of belonging to the Mediterranean cultural world. The translator was deemed, in Montoliu's words, "an educator of the masses", and translating became the "sacred duty" (1908/1998:37) of the great writers of the time.
Carner participated in the above agenda by choosing a language — for his translations — that was gov- erned by aesthetic priorities and an archaic flavour under- lined by a high degree of formality: preciosisme. His aim was to re-create a literary and urban language, and he used his translations of classics of children's literature as ling- uistic "laboratories" to test it out.
Seventy years later, in the nineties, the Empiiries publishing house commissioned from the poet and translator Salvador Oliva ( 1 942-) a new translation that would respond to the need for a text in accordance with the language as children speak it nowadays. It was reviewed favourably as a text that updates a much-respected older translation (I quote from one of the reviews in the Catalan newspaper Avui): "Oliva has met our expectations and renders a fluid, vivid and modem text that replaces Josep Camer's 1927 trans- lation which, with all its lexical splendour, had become old- fashioned." (Barba 1997).
Cultural references and issues of naturalisation and exoticizing
As will be seen in Camer's Alicia en terra de meravelles (1927), the Noucentista aims were attained in large measure by a naturalisation of the text, ie. taking it near to the target readers' space. Translation was initiated in the receiving culture, so here it is not a symptom of colonisation; quite the confrary, it helped to shape later liter- ary and linguistic conventions. It can be considered a subver- sive choice in that it signified the rebellion of the minority language, which aimed at universality through the exaltation of its own culture through translation, in a bilingual space shared with a strong majority language.
Parcerisas has drawn attention to the connotations of the term used in Catalan for naturalisation, anostrament or "making ours" and concludes that most peripheral cul- tures seem to have a positive view of translation. In his article Lo que se gana en traduccion, he puts forward four reasons why translation has been positive for minority cultures and, of course, Catalan: in... modem Catalan literature translation has not been considered a peripheral element to its own literary system but an element of undeniable sfrengthening...to fill in the voids of a syncopated and inconsistent tradition. ..to introduce genres, schools of thought or literary movements successful in other countries. ..at political cross-roads, in periods of brutal repression... in the ideological and cultural renewal of the Sixties. (1997: 54-55)
In this context, the introduction of a foreign text becomes a real catalyst. It is not strange, then, that natural- isation should be favoured by Camer, whereas Oliva, living at a time when the language has a more solid tradition to sustain it than seventy years ago, did not feel this need and includes exoticisms at the sociocultural level in his trans- lation.
The translation of sociocultural objects and the socio- textual level in Alice in Wonderland
Here, the transference of cultural references has been analysed by means of a statistical study of the sociocultural objects in each of the translations in order not so much to attain an impossible scientific objectivity as to minimise the subjectivity inherent in any evaluation. This study is based on Eugene Nida's (1964:55) classification of cultural referents in five groups: a) material, related to everyday objects, b) ecological, related to differences in the places, weather, flora, fauna, etc., c) social, related to social organisation and its artistic manifestations in the arts or literature and history, d) religious, which includes ritualised and ideological manifestations, and e) linguistic, the tool that is needed to express the rest and which, according to Nida, refers to attitudes and conversational cues. The following are examples of the different translation choices for sociocultural objects in Alice in Wonderland (in all cases, the first translation is Camer's and the second is Oliva's, and the numbers indicate the pages in each edition): Material references Propernames: Pat (6) Patrici(40) Pat (39)
Retranslation Pat Patrick Pat
Food and drink cake (33) coca (14) pastis(16)
Retranslation cake bread cake cake
Ecological Places English coast (40) Costa (20) costaanglesa(21)
Retranslation English coast coast English coast
Animals Cheshire cat (83) gatcastella(63) gat de Cheshire (63)
Retranslation Cheshire cat Castilian cat Cheshire cat
Games
Poker cards (ch. 8) transformed into poker cards (ch. 8)
Spanish cards (ch.8)
Social
Literature
'How doth the little 'Que li donarem 'Que fa el petit crocodile...' (38) a la pastoreta?' (18) cocodril..?' (20)
13
'You are old, Father ...versos de 'Sou veil, Pare
William...' (69) Moss6n Cinto (50) Guillem...(47)
Shakespeare (48) homes illustres (30) Shakespeare (29)
Retranslation
'How doth the little... "What shall we 'What does the give the little shep- little...? herdess? (a Cata- lan nursery song)
'You are old, ...Father Cinto's You are old, Father
Father William... ' verses... (reference William... '
to the Catalan poet
Mossen Jacint
Verdaguer
[1863-1918])
Shakespeare Illustrious men Shakespeare
Historical
William the Conqueror Napole6 (23) Guillem el Conqueridor
(41)
Retranslation
William the Conqueror Napoleon William the Conqueror
Religious
(More appear in Gamer's translation than in the source text)
Oh, dear! (25) Ave Maria! (5) Ondia! (9)
Retranslation
Oh, dear! Virgin Mary! Wow!
This comparison, of which only a few examples have been shown here, confirms the initial observations: Of 70 sociocultiiral objects chosen at random in the book, Camer has naturalised 29 whereas Oliva has done so with 10. The quantifiable resuh of this observation is as follows:
Camer has naturalised almost 40% of the analysed items whereas Oliva has done so with only a 14%. Quite the contrary of what's happened with the exoticizing strategy: 16.6% in Gamer's case and 32.8% m Oliva's.
Linguistic references
Hatim (1996) defines the sociotextual level as the practices or ways of thinking and speaking that typify particular groups of text users. Camer and Oliva address these issues in different ways.
The sociotextual level also includes socioling- uistic changes. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to defme quantifiable variables at this level but the difference between the translations permeates the texts. Although Camer wrote in a period that was close to Carroll's, his deliberate use of archaic language and a high degree of formality distanced his discourse even from that of children of his time, which conforms to the reasons outlined in the introduction: he meant to re-create the Golden Age of Catalan culture, which belonged to the 13* and 16* centuries. Let's take a look at some examples that illustrate this point: Pride in Catalan language
...she quite forgot ...s'oblidade parlar ...no es va adonar how to speak good catala fi ( 1 5) que li fallava la
English (35) gramatica ( 1 7)
Retranslation
...she quite forgot ...she forgot to speak... she didn't realise how to speak good good Catalan that her grammar
English was incorrect
High level of formality
I'm glad people don't Estic ben contenta Men'alegroqueno give birthday presents que pels natalicis no donin regals like that! (122) donin presents d'aque- d'aniversari com
sta mena ( 1 02) aquest! (92)
Retranslation
I'm glad people don't 'Presents' and I'm glad people
give birthday pres- 'natalici ' are don 't give birthday
ents like that archaic words presents like that!
Archaic language
The Fish-Footman El Lacai Peix El Lacai-Peix va
began by producing comen9a per treure's comen9ar per from under his arm de sota el bra? una treure's de sota el a great letter (79) gran lletra (59) bra? una carta molt
gran (57)
Retranslation
The Fish-Footman "Lletra " is an archaic The Fish-Footman began by producing word for "carta" began by producing from under his arm (letter) from under his arm
a great letter a great letter
The masculine as generic gender in Camer can be contrasted with Oliva's gender-oriented use of the mascu- line and the feminine, although the norms of the time should be considered: children infants nens i nenes
Retranslation children infants boys and girls
The need to update Gamer's text for children comes across clearly. Oliva himself talks about the need to rewrite the story because Gamer's translation "has become old. Owing to the language above all... the noucentista model has been proved too artificial ... [joumalistic] prose has set the linguistic model rather than Gamer's literary translations." (1997).
Illustrations: Anglada in Garner vs. Tenniel in Oliva
Illustrations can serve different purposes amongst which we can include the projection of the author's intent- ion— especially if s/he revises them, as was the case of Lewis Carroll with John Tenniel — or of the translator's in- tention, as was the case of Josep Camer and Lola Anglada. Oliva wished to be close to Carroll, whereas Camer pre- ferred to adapt the story to a Catalan environment. The il- lustrations in both translations underline these options.
What does one do with the non-linguistic elements of a text? Should they be "translated"? In Gamer's translation they certainly were: Lola Anglada (1892-1984) took Ten- niel's place, basing her drawings on Noucentista ideology and taking the reader to a Catalan and Mediterranean environment, thus further emphasising the tendency to naturalise the text. Lola Anglada was also a firm believer in the Noucentista agenda because for her "art was a means to
14
feel and think of one's country through images ... to walk towards an ideal, civilised and modem country ... Artists enrolled in the noucentista battle and created sensitive archetypes which would remember the fight and outline the collective project." (Cirici: 1979).
Oliva, on the other hand, includes Tenniel's drawings, thus favouring the foreign illustrator. The evocative power of the illustrations situates the reader in the translator's contemporary context and gives clues as to his objectives. A few examples will suffice to compare the effect of the picture on Gamer's and Oliva's readers.
tesque and clownish creature, which in Anglada's drawings has been transformed into a distinguished 19th-century Catalan gentleman. The other characters at the tea-party have also been sweetened up, and we can see how an English cot- tage has become a Catalan masia (country house) sur- rounded by Mediterranean conifers and fruit trees: the tea- party has become a berenar (aftemoon snack) in a typical pati de masia (country house courtyard). Although Gamer's text says / 'hora del te, the teapot has become a coffee-pot, coffee being a much more common drink in Catalonia, so that an inconsistency has been established between text and illustration.
Illustration 1. Tenniel's stark cold beach with its rigid unre- lenting rocks and sea drawn with straight lines has become a warm Mediterranean beach with sailing boats and curved lines in Anglada's illustrations. The characters are more yielding and both Alice and the Mock Turtle wear ribbons. Their body language is also more open and fluid.
Illustration 2. Carroll's underlying nightmarish and non- sensical atmosphere comes across in Tenniel's Hatter, a gro-
lllustration 3. As to games, the choice of playing cards clearly illustrates the wish to naturalise. However, Carroll's word game relating each of the four suits of cards with differ- ent occupations could not be kept in either franslation. Final comments
Each of these translations is a deliberate choice that springs from a social, historical and linguistic back- ground and seeks to situate Catalan literature alongside Spanish literature of the time.
The translation strategies used by each translator reflect the changes in society but share the same aim: to incorporate the classics of children's literature into the receiving culture. Gamer's degree of naturalisation is higher than that of Oliva, who has chosen exoticisms when addressing an audience with a wider background knowledge of British cultural references than was possessed by Gamer's target readers. The percentages in the study of sociocultural objects are in stark contrast: it seems that both franslators have produced a text that is consistent with its social and linguistic period, albeit using a different strategic approach.
It is not sufficient to know the author's background. It becomes totally necessary to study that of the translator and his/her time and place to understand the process of translation and the final product. Noucentisme was favoured by an urban bourgeoisie that, as has been mentioned, was highly conservative and religious. It was to this bourgeoisie that Gamer addressed his franslation: the preciosista style
15
comes across in Gamer's language but not in Oliva's. The latter's translation has been adapted to a late 20th-century readership of children who are used to English cultural referents, possess a good command of Catalan and its registers, and are not outwardly religion-oriented. Oliva's language shows how contemporary Catalan has been shaped according to the journalistic prose of the twenties and fifties, not to Noucentiste patterns, and his translation mirrors a society that is closer to the source culture. Natur- alisation is not always an imposed or colonising choice. It can serve as a conscious means to enrich the target culture, especially when it needs to find its own place in a space it has to share with another language. In this case, the foreign is "eaten" and "digested" to nourish the target culture, as Augusto do Campos' cannibalistic approach to translation would express it (1978). It is m these times when it is crucial to translate literary classics — such as Alice in Wonder- land— for children, who are "a culture's future" in John Stephens' words above, as a means to promote a minority language and literature that wishes to become part of those children's future, on equal terms with the majority language and literature with which it coexists.
REFERENCES
Bacardi et al. 1 998. Cent anys de traduccio at catala ( 1 89 1 - 1 99 1 ).
Antologia. Vic: EUMO. Barba, Carles. 1997. "Alicia al pais de la modemitat". Barcelona:
Avu\,3Q.\.91. Carroll, Lewis. 1865/1970. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in
Martin Gardner (ed) The Annotated Alice. Middlesex: Penguin.
— Gamer, Josep (trans). 1 927/1 97 1 . Alicia en Terra de Meravelles. Barcelona: Joventut.
— Oliva, Salvador, (trans). \996. Alicia al Pais de les Meravelles. Barcelona: Empuries.
Ghevrel, Yves. 1995. "La reception de litteratures estrangeres", in Revista de Filologia Francesa. Madrid: Universidad Complutense, pp. 83-100.
Girici, A. 1 979/1 992. "Lola Anglada i els mites", Quadems de I'obra social. In Comas, Montserrat (1992) "Lola Anglada, in memoriam". Barcelona: CLIJ (Cuadernos de Literatura Infantil yJuvenil), October, n°43, pp. 51-55.
De Campos, Augusto. 1978. Verso, Reverso, Controverso. Sao Paulo: Perspectiva.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. See Venuti, below.
Gonzalez Davies, Maria 1 998. "Traduint I'impossible: Aspectes liidics a Alice in Wonderland". In Meseguer, Lluis & Villanueva, M' Luisa (eds) Intertextualitat i recepcio. CeiSteUo de la Plana: Universitat Jaume I.
Hatim, Basil. 1 996. Seminar on Translation Studies at the Facultat de Ciencies Humanes, Traduccio i Documentacio (Universitat de Vic, Spain).
Hermanns, Theo. 1988. "On Translating Proper Names, with reference to De Witte and Max Havelaar" in Michael Wintle (ed). Modern Dutch Studies. London: Athlone, pp. 1 1-13.
Montoliu, Manuel de. Bacardi, M. (eds.). 1998. Cent anys de traduc- cio al catala (J 891 -1990). Antologia, Vic: EUMO Editorial.
Nida, Eugene. 1964. Towards a Science of Translating. The Nether- lands: J. Brill.
Oliva, Salvador 1995. "Sobre els elements suposadament intraduibles
de la traducci6 literaria". In Josep Marco (ed) La Traduccio
Literaria. Gastello de la Plana: Universitat Jaume I. — 1 997 "Pla ha guanyat Gamer en el model de Uengua" in Agusti
Golomines (interview). Barcelona: Avui, 30. 1 .97. Parcerisas, Francesc. 1997. "Lo que se gana en traduccion". Donaire
n° 8: 54-59. Rovira, Teresa and Carme Ribe. 1972. Bibliogrqfia historica del
libro infantil en Catalan. Madrid: Asociacion Nacional de
Bibliotecarios, Archiveros y Arque61ogos. Schliermacher, Friedrich. See Venuti, below. Stephens, John. 1992. Language and Ideology in Children's
Fiction. London: Routledge. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator's Invisibility: A History
of Translation. London & New York: Routledge.
NOTES
' The sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia has changed in recent years. In 1 996, the year in which Oliva's translation was published, 95% of the population could understand Catalan and almost 50% (45.8%) could write it. The main children's periodical written wholly in Catalan, Cavall Fort, appeared in 1 962 and has a print run of 25,000. There are two TV channels belonging to the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation which broadcast only in Catalan: TVS and Canal 33. In urban spaces such as Barcelona, bilingualism is the norm in the broadcasting of local television channels such as BTV.
SfPfnDIPITT
\Paridtions on a Ch^shirfz Cat
...we gotta go and never stop going
til we get there.
Where we going, man?
I don't know but we gotta go.
Jack Kerouac On the Road (1951)
If ycis c5on't know where you're going Any P09(3 will take you there
George Harrison "Any Road" on the Brainwashed CD (2002)
16
Leaves from the Deanery Garden
Thank you for the copy of Knight Letter number 69. Some- how, I think the additional humor on the front page has not escaped such a vibrant character as yourself.
I found the issue and its articles quite interesting, in light of having written our operatic version of Alice. Kevin Pease's ambigram was of course the same logic structure as one of Mozart's famous musical jokes.
In my score, I had intended to take guidance from Carroll's text directly, and, reflecting on that process, I have found myself somewhat unaware (a feature of compositional thought as documented by both Stravinsky and Schoenberg) of what was occurring in the act of composing. Looking back and with the articles' points stimulating my thoughts, I realize that I have made my own musical mondegreen here and there. Or perhaps, as Sylvia Wright's "word or phrase resulting from a misin- terpretation of a word or phrase that has been heard [but not read]" refers only to words, we should coin our own musical versions thereof. How about ''revegreeii", based on the French word for dream? "Life, what is it but a dream?" Imbedding in the score little snippets of musical citations of operatic literature, children's songs and other miscellaneous quotes, these little quotes some- times have become obscured enough that what results, in Wright's sense, is now known clearly only to me, for some citations are not quotes, but new
musical gestures misinterpreted from other composers' work.
Certainly, as to other quasi-Carrollian effects in the score, there are all those things your Knight Letter's articles speak of, as there are in the Ur-texts themselves. There is parody "that mimics the style of another composer"; musical anagrams as "harmonic structures representative of letters are rearranged into another word or phrase" (A=a, L=d, I=a, C=c and E=e, these notes based on the musical scale, and Maurice Durufle's extension of additional letters inter- preted as notes); an overriding acrostic in which the simple diatonic scale makes a cantus firmus for much of the music; musical palindromes in which many phrases play in and then backwards out again; and nonsense, when certain polytonal gestures (particularly in the celesta's interplay in some of the orchestrations as Alice makes her mathematical and geographical errors) and traditional harmonies are used untraditionally, such as the dominant seventh chord with its well-accepted historical ftinctions which become whole sets
of nonftinctional harmonies, as in the setting of the "Fish Riddle."
We shall see how and where this score lands. I have sent out quite a number of copies, and now am flirting with two companies which are examining "her" with the thought of committing to a premiere. With the long lead time which opera companies require to plan, I think this will still be a long process. In the meanwhile, keep good thoughts.
Gary Bachlund
Re: "A Dis-Parody of Anonymity" by Matt Demakos and Ruth Herman in AX 69:
The referenced article contains a number of errors, a ques- tionable claim and a definition to resolve.
The claim by the authors that a nursery rhyme can't have a known author is curious. What is their authority for such an assertion? The Columbia Ency- clopedia, fifth edition says nursery rhymes are "usually anonymous" but hardly man- dates it. And the Opies' Three Centuries of Nursery Rhymes and Poetry for Children, 1911, a catalogue of an exhibition of their books "in which the most familiar of our traditional rhymes are first found" lists a number of authors. In their The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 1951, the Opies write "Nor should the critic be sur- prised when verses now pre- served solely for the amuse- ment of the young are discovered to have come from such an accomplished hand as Sedley's." So, to the Opies, ano- nymity wasn't a necessity for a nursery rhyme.
The [article's] authors paraphrase that "The Queen of Hearts" is "an anonymous rhyme used but not parodied by Carroll". On p. 359 of their Oxford Dictionary, the Opies write that it first appeared in print in 1782. The first verse is nearly identical to the verse in Alice. On p. 360, they write "Lewis Carroll infroduces the rhyme-characters in Alice in Won- derland, 1865." After Carroll "introduces" or "used" the characters, I believe he parodied them.
In my copy of Miscellaneous Poems by John Byrom, Manchester, 1773, pp. 343-344, Byrom wrote: "Some say, compar'd to Bononcini, / That Mynheer Handel's but a Ninny; / Others aver, that he to Handel / Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle: / Sfrange all this Difference should be, / 'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!" If someone can find an earlier reference to the "Tweedle" use I would be interested in learning of it. If this is the earliest, as I believe it to be.
17
then it is a satire, not a nursery rhyme and wasn't written anonymously as claimed by the authors. As Dee is quoted in Looking-Glass, " — but as it isn't, it ain't." Did Carroll parody this? 1 believe so. (N.B. Bandersnatch No.86, p. 12 cited a 1 776 "Tweedle" reference, and "Far-Flung" in this issue, p.29 contains an 1780.)
The authors say that "Twmkle, Twinkle Little Star" fails to meet the definition of a nursery rhyme, as it has a known author. The author is now known but it was published anonymously "By the Authors of 'Original Poems'" in 1 806 in Rhymes for the Nursery (not Rhymes of the Nursery as stated by the authors!). But in any event, anonymity isn't a requirement for a nursery rhyme as I believe has been shown. (If the authors persist in their anonymity test, then it would seem that this nursery rhyme, published anonymously, became an un-nursery rhyme when the author, Jane Taylor, became known.) The title of the piece is "The Star." It was originally a poem, not a song as stated by the authors. The Opies are clear on this as they cited the 1 806 book, (a copy of which is in my collection) in the same note on p. 398 of Dictionary as the 1 860 and 1 865 music referred to by the authors. The Opies are in error writing that 1 860 was the first time the poem was set to music. See James J. Fuld, The Book of World-famous Music, New York:Dover, my copy is the fourth edition 1995. On p. 593, he writes "the music — appeared (without words) in 1761 — in Paris." On p. 594 he continues, the "music and words of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star were probably first printed together in The Singing Master No. Ill, First Class Tune-Book, (London, 1838)." The Opies, on p. 398 of Dictionary v^rite "The Star has been fi-equently parodied, an example being the Mad Hatter's, 'Twinkle, twinkle little bat!'" This one is a parodied nursery rhyme.
The Opies have a great deal to say about Humpty Dumpty in their Dictionary. They call him a "popular nursery figure" (p. 215) and reproduce the Tenniel illustration of Alice and Humpty about to shake hands. Is this only a "use" as stated by the authors, or is it a parody, "an imitation for comic effect" as I believe? Readers can debate this.
Regarding the "Lion and the Unicom", see the excellent article written by the Carroll scholar Jeffrey Stem, "Carroll, The Lion and the Unicom" in The Carrollian, No.5, Spring 2000, pp. 42-51. He opens his article by writing "The intriguing question of the source of artistic inspiration is emphasized for Carroll scholars since a clear element of the Alice text is related to allusive parodies that are part of the intentional undertow."
Finally, just what is the authors', or any reader's definition of a "parody"? My Webster defines it as "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule." And the same dictionary defines "imitate" as " 1 : to follow as a pattem, model or example; 2: to be or appear like: resemble." To "imitate for comic effect" was clearly one of Carroll's objectives with his Alice books and he succeeded famously.
But just what in the Alice books qualifies as "a parodied nursery rhyme" or even just a parody is not so clear.
Jon Lindseth Cleveland, Ohio
I was pleased not only by your printing of my letter re: "white stones" but immensely impressed by the further research which brought to light the "references from classical literature".
Further I was entertained by the reference to Littell's book The Company. Des Fitzgerald was a colleague of mine, married at one time to Marrietta Tree (Adlai Stevenson's fi-iend), and an interesting man during the Vietnam War. One of our close associates had a biography written about him entitled Wilderness of Mirrors which exactly reflected the nature of a career in espionage. The title suggested a life experienced "through a looking-glass".
Meanwhile, "correspondingly", as the Harvard sociology professor [Pitirim] Sorokin would have said in his thick Russian accent, there was another book like Littell's: Historian's Fallacies by David Hackett Fischer (Harper Row, 1970), which found much in the illogic of most academic work to make the author think he'd been following the White Rabbit. He used many quotations from the Carroll canon to make his points.
Finally, should not Darebury (line 6, p.25) be Daresbury?
Best regards,
John Hadden Bmnswick ME
Sibyline leaves and "Which Dreamed It?" in Alice's Adventures
1. Sibyline leaves
Chloe Nichols has contacted me in connection with a recent piece in The Carrollian, drawing my attention to her ovm piece in Knight Letter 67. She deplores two tendencies which are widespread in Carrollian criticism: leaving intuitions as intuitions without producing much evidence to shore them up, and interpreting Victorian writing in terms of current American thought patterns. She is well aware that her own paper exhibits both these failings. Despite this, her paper possesses a remarkable power of stimulating its readers, arising from her skill in leading them to the brink of her discoveries, but leaving them to take the final steps on their own. This applies panicularly to her study of two elements of the frame story of Alice's Adventures: story- telling (both oral and written) and leaves.
Since Carroll's story describes an "under-ground" adventure, it is natural that he would have drawn upon the most famous explorations of that region. There are fi-equent allusions to Dante's Inferno in his middle chapters, but I know of no other crific beside Nichols who has noticed the allusions to Virgil's Alneid, despite that book having always been recognised as one which "every schoolboy knows."
1
("Schoolboy" here of course means "public schoolboy." This English phrase was common currency, but has declined in use in the past fifty years as more and more state-educated boys — and girls — have infiltrated the professional classes.)
Alice, descending into Wonderland, comes down "upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves." With the dark passages before and behind her, this is certainly reminiscent, as Nichols implies, of the heaps of dry leaves which accumulated in the sibyl Deiphobe's cave-system and upon which she wrote her prophecies. An accumulation of dry leaves inscribed with prophecies would today be called a manuscript. And if we draw a parallel with the name given to the "old Turtle" in Chapter 9 of Alice 's Adventures we also have the glue which sticks the leaves of the manuscript together.
Nichols suggests that there may additionally be a correlation between this heap and the famous "golden bough" which /Eneas had to bring with him to gain access to the underground realms. Carroll would have been unlikely to visualise that bough as bearing dry leaves, because it would go against the deeper symbolism of the image. But if Alice did fall heavily upon a small dead bough she would be likely to break it into a heap of sticks and dry leaves. Moreover, there is an alternative meaning to the phrase "down she came upon" which suggests that Alice, like y^neas, brought the "heap" from the outside world (or, more accurately, that it brought her), even though she did not become aware of it until the completion of her fall. In the same way, the book Alice's Adventures acts for readers as a golden bough in that it gives them access to the Wonderland of Alice's dream imagination.
Although this sibyl and her cave system existed as a material reality in ancient Greece, they are also, of course, a metaphor for the workings of a sub-conscious mind. Alice's mind, however, at first seems to be ahnost a perfect and absolute blank. She enters the "long, low hall" with many closed doors which is the traditional image of a child's brain in fairy tales like the Grimms' "Mary's Child," and all she finds there is an almost empty table: the tabula rasa which symbolised a child's brain for Enlightenment (and many later) educationalists. But the all-important tiny golden key of Coleridge's "primary imagination" lies there.
Nichols notes that in the closing part of the frame story Carroll describes leaves which are not simply "dry" but "dead." And, whereas Alice descended into Wonderland "down [. . .] upon" the dry leaves, the dead leaves descend "down [. . .] upon" Alice as she leaves that realm. Nichols assumes that because Alice dreams of Spring it must be Spring in the above-ground world. But seasons in dreams do not necessarily match with the actual seasons. The few details we are given of Alice's above-ground surroundings would fit any month in Oxford from April through September. The season is fixed as Michaelmas*, however, by the combination of the first falling leaves of autumn and the time of the sunset. Nichols quotes Peter Coveney's assessment of the mood here as conveying "hints of be-
trayed innocence and autumnal decay," and these are cer- tainly present. But the popular myth that that is all there is to Carroll has long been exploded. Of equal importance to him here is the fact that Michaelmas is the beginning of the new year at Oxford — a time when youth is called upon to put aside childish things and heed St. Michael's call to battle against the dragon.
The dead leaves in the overground world as Alice awakes manifest in Wonderland as what Nichols aptly calls "the at- tacking forces of Alice's antagonist". When, ultimately, Al- ice is able to denounce openly the Queen of Hearts (her mother) and the Queen's lackeys as "nothing but a pack of cards!" she triumphantly rises out of Wonderland, stepping from childhood to adolescence by rejecting misguided pa- rental authority. It is a splendid beginning to her Michaelic battle.
These playing-cards contrast sharply with the leaves of the book at the beginning of Alice's dream. Their stiffness, their uniformity in all aspects except their faces, plus the stylisation of these faces, forcibly convey her mother's de- plorable conception of human beings.
One of the traditional uses of cards is for divination, and in this respect the pack flying at Alice is, as Nichols hints, like the leaves blowing out of Deiphobe's cave. Critics have noticed that the first card to fall in Tenniel's illustration is the Ace of Spades (the Executioner). Fortunately this card looks likely to miss Alice, as do the lowest of the Diamonds and two unidentified cards. But the immediately following Ace of Hearts and Ace of Diamonds seem likely to "flutter down upon her". And if, as seems likely, they represent excess of passion and excess of wealth, then her future is bleak.
2. Which Dreamed It
Nichols argues that Carroll several times in the end part of the frame story stresses the importance of what Bjorn Sundmark calls "the oral-literary continuum". Nichols also stresses that we do not learn exactly what Alice tells her sister. Alice tells her sister "all these strange adventures that you have just been reading about," but her remembered story will not be exactly the same as the content of her dream. Her sister's memory of what Alice tells her will likewise be 'imperfect'. And these three versions of the tale will differ considerably from the initial tale told to Alice Liddell and her two eldest sisters which is alluded to in the frame story of Under-Ground:
She saw an ancient city, and a quiet river winding near it along the plain, and up the stream went slowly gliding a boat with a merry party of children on board. [. . .] among them was another little Alice, who sat listenmg to a tale that was being told, and she listened for the words of the tale, and lo! it was the dream of her own little sister. [...]
Then she thought (in a dream within the dream, as it were) how this same little Alice would [ text continues as in Alice 's Adventures].
19
The situation here foreshadows Alice's "Which Dreamed It" musings at the end of her Looking-Glass-Land adventures. The metaphysical situation there is complex enough, but here it is yet more complex, with the tale itself constantly metamorphosing and Carroll stressing that it is heard/read/ experienced differently by different listeners/readers/ 'dreamers'. A similar situation recurs in chapter 3 with Alice's response to the Mouse's tale, which becomes for her something palpable. There is another comparable situation in Chapter 7 where Alice takes as a fictional story the Dormouse's description of how the situation of three Liddell girls appears to a creature like itself which perceives wholly in imaginative pictures.
It is legitimate, in this context, to ask 'what is the book which Alice's sister is reading?' Carroll depicts her in Under- Ground as an archetypal young woman of the Romantic period sitting bolt-upright but with bowed head, engrossed in her book and oblivious to young Alice m front of her. One is reminded of a famous painting by Caspar David Friedrich: Park mit Aussicht ins freie Land, also known as Gartenterrasse or Staatliche Schlosser und Garten in Sanssouci, Potsdam. There, it is a glorious landscape to which the young woman seems oblivious. But another, deeper meaning lies behind this meaning. At that deeper level, the landscape is created by the young woman's higher imagination, as is suggested by the lion-guarded gate in the painting. Similarly, the above quotation from the end of Under-Ground suggests that the "dream Alice" of Under- Ground and Wonderland is, from one aspect, an imaginative creation of Alice's sister (and likewise of Carroll and the reader). It is relevant here that stories by several of the principal German Romantic writers tell of books in which the protagonist's adventures have been written down before they happen by all-seeing beings who are never explained to the protagonist or to the reader of these stories.
Carroll disguises this aspect of his story by telling us that Alice had "once or twice [. . .] peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it." Alice is likely to have done this very soon after her sister took up the book, and pages 2-7 of Alice's Adventures in the original Macmillan editions are without "pictures or
conversations", since talking to oneself cannot truly be called conversation.
At the end, Alice's sister is depicted as sentimental and hypocritical. It is dishonest of her to muse about Alice's "happy summer days" when, on the day in question, Alice was bored stiff Nevertheless, when Alice has told her story and has preemptively been sent home to tea, this sister is capable of a well-organised, conscious meditation about Alice and the dissemination of the story of her adventures in the fijture. This dissemination will not be restricted to her own family because, contrary to Nichols' assertion, there is no suggestion that Alice will tell her stories as a mother. Although (as has been suggested by J. Pallison) Carroll seems to draw elements of his final image from the end of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, where Laura and Lizzie tell their adventures to their children, it seems likely that here he pictures Alice becoming a traditional "Mother Goose" type of universal story-teller.
John Docherty
* [According to Edward Wakeling, Michaelmas is the pe- riod from September to December, not April to Septem- ber as stated. The late Spring is called "Easter and Act" and the summer is called "Trinity. "]
Friedrich (detail)
Eyebeam by Sam Hurt
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:»C^.-u^^^^ TIRED'
20
An Unheeded Early Plea for a Lewis Carroll Society
August A. Imholtz, Jr.
In 1969, the year of the founding of the British Lewis Carroll Society and five years before the birth of ours, there appeared in the American publication Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics^ a call for the estab- lishment of a Lewis Carroll Society. The call came in an article in the November 1969 issue (Vol. 2, no. 4) published under the title "For a Lewis Carroll Society" and its author signed himself "A.Vorpal Penn." Here are the first few paragraphs of that article.
The publication of Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice and Annotated Snark has given new life to the Lewis Carroll, or whimsicalogical, school of recreational linguistics. Is there a place in the world for a formal organization to give support and encouragement to this worthy school? I think there is, and that place is here.
I propose that a call be issued to all serious Carroll students and funny imitators to form a society for the hunting of Snarks. (Due to the dearth of warranted genuine Snarks, it would be necessary to recognize merely literary Snarks as fair game. See definitions and specimens below.) The society would be founded on estab- lished Pickwickian principles, and members would be admitted only upon evidence of having captured a Snark.
One possible name which suggests itself is "Professional Snark Hunters' Association of the World" (acronym PSHAW). Another, for which I acknowledge a preference, is the shorter and in every way punchier "Bold Order of Snark Hunters" (BOSH). Once honored by admission to the society, members would be entitled to use its initials after their names on formal occasions and in advertising.
If a society emblem were to be adopted, perhaps it could display an arrangement of shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbages and kings, along with a suitable motto, such as "Lingua in Bucca!" [L. "Tongue in Cheek"]
Definitions and Specimens of Literary Snarks
Snark of the First Type: An Observation. In Through the Looking-Glass the White Knight is discoursing about inventions:
"Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did," [he says] "was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course." "In time to have it cooked for the next course?" said Alice. "Well, that vf ay quick work, certainly!" "Well, not the next course. . ." etc.
Surely this is an allusion to the adage that the proof of the pudding is in the eating! Yet, since the recipe given includes gunpowder, perhaps in this case it is as well that the pudding was not even cooked!
Snark of the Second Type: A Contradiction. Again in Through the Looking-Glass, when Alice discovers the chess people strolling among the cinders of the hearth, she picks up the White King, dusts him off, and sets him beside his Queen on the tabletop. The startled King says: "I assure you, my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers!" to which the Queen replies, "You haven't got any whiskers."
Yet the official Tenniel illustrations clearly show the King to have chin whiskers at least!
Snark of the Third Type: A Speculation. Nowhere in The Hunting of the Snark are we told the name of the ship. Yet, given the fact that the captain was a Bellman, and knowing the
propensity of captains to name their vessels after their lady friends, mightn't we infer that the ship was called "The Bellman's Belle"?
Snark of the Fourth Type: A Question. Sir John Tenniel 's illustration of the slaying of the Jabberwock shows a youthful figure with long, blond hair wielding the vorpal sword. Is it Alice?
Snark of the Fifth Type: An Imitation. See "A Helico-Spherical Cocktail Party," by A. Vorpal Penn, in Word Ways, Vol. I, No. 3.
Snark of the Sixth Type: The Invention of a new type of Snark.
Snark of the Non Type: One Which Would Be a Snark if it were directly related to the writings of Lewis Carroll, "but as it isn't, it ain't".
The article then meanders somehow into reflections on the story of the Wizard of Oz and the improvements made upon it by the famous Judy Garland film of 1939.
"A. Vorpal Penn" was the pen name of John Collins, who wrote several other articles on Carrollian subjects for Word Ways magazine. Unfortunately no further information on him could be found through standard library and Internet searches. He was not among the early members of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. In fact, he seems never to have joined our society. His last known address according to the current editor of Word Ways was in California in 1 976. From the beginning of his essay it seems clear that he had only recently come across Martin Gardner's annotated Carroll books. Or perhaps he thought to himself on a rainy autumn afternoon, "Why not start a Lewis Carroll Society?"
Whatever the case may have been, he displays no knowledge of the original Lewis Carroll Society, which held its first meeting in London on May 1 5 of that year. The British Carroll Society was originally organized as a club under the asgis of the Greater London Council, and its first general meeting after the May organizational meeting was held in October 1969. The Times and The Daily Telegraph covered that event and news of the new organization was picked up in a number of U.S. newspapers, presumably through the wire service. However, Collins makes no mention of the London organization and his plea would have made considerably less sense had he been aware of the group in London set up by Ellis Hilbnan, Anne Clark, and Tim Leonard. The earliest membership lists I have for the Lewis Carroll Society also do not show a John Collins among its members. If anything, Collins may have heard of the Oxford and Cambridge Snark Clubs or at least read the entry on the Snark societies in the preface printed for the 1 967 Penguin edition of Martin Gardner's The Annotated Snark because of his inordinate preoccupation with Snarks in his Word Ways article cited above. It is interesting that another American in addition to Stan Marx was thinking about starting a Lewis Carroll society. I wonder whether there had been others thinking along the same lines?
Thanks are due to Mark Richards for information on the beginnings of the British Lewis Carroll Society.
1 . Founded in 1 968, Word Ways is still published in an 80-page format four times a year and is a delight for fans of "logology" or "recreational linguistics". Word Ways, Spring Valley Road, Morristown, NJ 07960; wordways@juno.com; http://wordways.com/.
21
Ravings from the Writing Desk
of Alan Tannenbaum
The LCSNA writing desk just arrived here in Aus- tin, Texas, from its former custodian, Stephanie Lovett. I unpacked it, booted it up, and it seems to work nicely. The drawers are still filled with postage cases, electric pens, and raven quills, but I don't think I'll be using those in this issue's column, my first after taking over as your President.
The first pleasant order of business for me is to thank the previous officers. Stephanie, along with the re- elected Mark Burstein (Vice President and Knight Letter Editor), Cindy Watter (Secretary), and Francine Abeles (Treasurer) all deserve our thanks for a job well done. I know Stephanie will continue to work on Society projects as a continuing member of the Board of Directors, and since the other of- ficers will be sticking around, the tran- sition will be an easy one.
I also want to thank Germaine Weaver and Don Rackin for their ser- vice on the Board, and to welcome Matt Demakos, Andrew Sellon, and Angelica Carpenter as new Board members. The remainder of the Boards of Directors and Advisors remains intact, as do the memorial funds committees. Charlie Lovett continues as chairman of the Publications Committee.
Above all, the Society is on good footing: financially; with our membership (over 330 worldwide); and with regards to plans for future meetings, publications, and other activities already under- way.
Our outstanding meeting in San Francisco is cov- ered elsewhere in this issue, but special thanks go to Mark Burstein and Cindy Watter for making it a success.
Now, on to the future. The next meeting will be held on April 12*, 2003 at the Newberry Library in Chi- cago. Former President Joel Birenbaum will be arranging the festivities. Some excellent talks and activities are in the works, including a lecture by Douglas R. Hofstadter, who is famous for many reasons. I was first introduced to his writ- ings in the Metamagical Themas column in Scientific Amer- ican (successor to Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column), and then to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, subtitled "A Meta- phorical Fugue on Mind and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carroll". You won't want to miss this talk!
We have two other fine speakers as well. George Bodmer, chair of the English department at Indiana Univer- sity Northwest, will discuss Dr A.S.W. Rosenbach, the fa- mous collector and bookseller, best known for his procure- ment of the original manuscript for Alice's Adventures un- der Ground. Our own Ruth Berman will examine the genre of the Alice stories vis-^-vis whether or not they should be
considered a "fairy tale". The Newberry will also stage an exhibition of some of their Lewis Carroll holdings.
It's time for another auction! If the main program isn't enough to entice you to come to Chicago, then the auction surely will. We haven't held an auction since 1994, so imagine the treasures waiting to go up on the block. It helps fimd the publications activities of the Society, so watch for a letter and start looking through your collection for items to donate.
The Fales Library at New York University, home of the Alfred C. Berol Collection (not to mention the fii- ture home of the LCSNA Archives - see KL 68, p. 18), will be host to the Autumn 2003 meet- ing, tentatively scheduled for Octo- ber 25*. We already have some out- standing speakers lined up, includ- ing the well-known Carroll scholars Morton Cohen and Edward Wake- ling. These two world-class authors, whose works include a biography, the diaries, letters, photographs, games, and just about any other as- pect of Lewis Carroll you can think of, are writing a new book on his communications with his illustra- tors, scheduled for publication next Autumn.
As for ravings, I want to point out that the Society is embod- ied in the semi-annual meetings, the Web site, and our publications. Since only a small fraction of our far-flung membership can travel to the meet- ings, it falls to the publications, including the Web site, the series of books Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll and especially the Knight Letter, to serve as the face of the Society and the value received from membership. From my point of view, we're looking good, but if you have any suggestions for im- provement or possibly material to contribute, I urge you to contact the respective editors or me directly. We can be reached through links on the Web site or in care of the Sec- retary, whose address appears on the back page. Your par- ticipation is very much welcomed!
"Snow White was poisoned by an apple.
Jack found a giant in his beanstalk, and look
what happened to Alice when she ate the mushroom!
And you wonder why I won't eat fruits and vegetables?"
22
^monam
Peter Lauchlan Heath
1920 - August 4*
Peter Heath, who was a former president and nearly a founding member of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America as well as a very good friend to many Carrollians in the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, has died in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Bom in Milan, Italy, Peter attended Shrewsbury School, one of the most academically rigorous of the British public schools, and then Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a first-class degree in Modem Greats. He served with the Royal Armoured Corps during the Second World War.
In 1995 he became Professor Emeritus of Phi- losophy at the University of Virginia after having taught at Mr. Jefferson's university for 33 years. He had served as chairman of the Corcoran Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia and as president of the Virg- inia Philosophical Association. According to the notice in the Charlottesville Daily Progress, Peter "taught close to 10,000 undergraduates during his career at the University of Virginia, with his Introduction to Philosophy and Basic Logic classes, leading generations of students into the study of philosophy. His previous academic appointments had been at the University of Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland."
When Dr. Sandor Burstein and his son Mark were planning to establish a West Coast branch of the Society, Peter, who was then president of the LCSNA but never jealous of its prerogatives, wrote them a most encour- aging letter congratulating them on their new Carroll venture and recognized Mark as the "Warden of Outland".
Like F.C.S. Schiller, the British pragmatist and author of the Mind! parodic commentary on The Hunting of the Snark, Peter had a roguish sense of humor which is perhaps best exhibited in his brilliant article on "Noth- ing" in The Encyclopcedia of Philosophy. Of course, he also wrote the article on Lewis Carroll for that encyclo- paedia. [In fact, he used to enjoy introducing himself as "the world's foremost authority on nothing".]
Although he was trained at Oxford during the heyday of the analytic philosophy of language school, he was never one of those tiresome Wittgenstein clones, even if one of his favorite phrases went something like this: "The paradox we seem to be facing simply wants some sorting out of its elements in order to be resolved." In one of his first philosophical articles, "The Limits of Science" (Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 2, no. 8, 1952), Peter translated Ugo Spiritus's arguments for the place of metaphysics in the modern world. He also wrote important articles on Hume, Reid, Ryle, and Scheler. He translated numerous classics of German philosophy.
including works by Kant, Schelling, and Max Scheler 's book The Nature of Sympathy; he edited Augustus De Morgan's logical works, etc.; but it is for his Carrollian writings that Peter is remembered by most of us. His The Philosopher s Alice, subtitled "The Thinking Man's Guide toaMisunder- ^^^— «^^^^^^^« stood Nursery Classic", ^^^^^^J^^^l (^91^, reprint- ed 1983), re- ^Bf^^^'^l'^Bl ceived enthus- iastic reviews H^^K. •'^jtiBB ^^"^ ^'^^^ ^^^' roll scholars [^^H|^> /'^^»^I^S ^^^ philosoph- ers. He dis- ^^^^^ ^\ UR tinguished be- tween "non- ^H^M^^gji^^E|l sense" and "ab- surdity", "put- ^^^V^I^HP^Hl ting Edward Lear in the ^^^B ^^L ^H former cate- gory and Car- HHb ^m VI roll solidly in the latter". Likewise in his Jabberwocky (Vol. 13, no. 3) article on Carroll parodies he offers a clear distinction between "parody" and "bur- lesque". Peter wrote wonderftil reviews of the important works of Carroll scholarship of the past decades. To cite just two examples, see his "Carroll Through the Pillar- Box" {Virginia Quarterly, Summer 1980) on Morton Cohen's edition of the letters and "The Carrollian Paper Chase" {English Language Notes, Dec. 1982) on Soar- ing with the Dodo.
Noted as a superb raconteur, he gave many talks, with his distinctively animated style of delivery, to our Society, such as his memorable lecture delivered in Baltimore in 1990 on the nagging problems of the paternity of the pig baby and the genders of the animal denizens of Wonderland), and this was before gender studies became the darling child of academic critics.
In one of his last publications, the entry on "Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge" for the Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: 2000) Peter says this about the two Alice books and The Hunting of the Snark: "Together with portions of his two-volume fairy- novel Sylvie and Bruno they were the only writings ostensibly for children to have attracted or deserved the notice of philosophers." We are most grateful Peter Lauchlan Heath was one of those philosophers.
-August A. Imholtz, Jr.
Adolph Green
1 9 14 - October 24"^ Partner of Betty Comden in writing too many classic Broadway musicals, songs and screenplays to begin to recount, although one might start with On The Town, Bells Are Ringing, Wonderful Town, Peter Pan and Singin' in the Rain, he addressed the LCSNA in October, 1989, about his lifelong passion for Carroll. At his star-studded memorial at the Schubert Theater on December 3"*, the ceremony started with actor Kevin Kline reciting "Father William", a poem Mr. Green "recited whenever he could or wanted to".
23
Knavery
[The "Knave of Arts", who wishes to remain otherwise anony- mous, is a creative contributor to the Yahoo Lewis Carroll eGroup. S/he has culled of few of his/her favorites for us.]
1. "Talking of axes," said the Duchess, "chop off her head!" Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take the hint: but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to be listening. . .
Is the Duchess addressing the cook, or is she addressing Alice? The Duchess must have been annoyed by the cook's throwing things at her and the baby, so perhaps she is asking Alice to chop off the cook's head - or maybe the baby's head, if it really is a pig. Perhaps the Duchess wants to add the pig to the soup, in which case it would be "Pig and Pepper Soup". I no- tice that when one buys packages of mixed beans to make soup, the instruc- tions usually advise to add ham, or per- haps salt pork. However, one might object that the Duchess says "her," so she could not be talking about the baby, for Alice says "Oh, there goes his pre- cious nose!" But perhaps Alice was mistaken. Neither Alice nor the Duch- ess mentions its gender again.
rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the - under the - under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name - why, to be sure it hasn't!"
"The boys proved that you do not need to live in the country to commime with nature and that they had taken to heart his [H.G. Wells'] very sound advice that natural history was not simply the collecting of thmgs and certainly not the mere naming of them. In the Henly House School Magazine, H.G. Wells, aged twenty-three, criticized 'vituperative natural- ists with a classical bias' who insisted on calling a harmless sunflower, Helianthus annuus and fixing Lepus cuniculus on the inoffen- sive "bunny." [Ann Thwaite, A. A. Milne, Random House, 1990]
6. The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one flipper across his eyes. He looked at Alice and tried to speak, but, for a minute or two, sobs choked his voice. "Same as if he had a bone in his throat," said the Gryphon; and it set to work shaking him and punching him in the back. At last the Mock Turtle recovered his voice...
7 must get this
2. "It was the best butter," the March
Hare meekly replied. "Yes, but some
crumbs must have got in as well," the Hatter grumbled, "you
shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife."
typewriter fixed. '
This implies that there was a butter-knife and a bread-knife. Proof that the English were civilized once, and perhaps still are.
3. "And who are these?" said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying round the rose-tree; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or three of her own children. . .The Queen. . .said to the Knave, "Turn them over!" The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.
Why did he use one foot, instead of his hands? Was he too stiff to bend? Or was he disdainful of gardeners? And he turned them over "very carefully" because they might have been the royal children - or soldiers.
4. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
"Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge." Ham- let, Act III, Scene 2. CLD often pamphleteered against and satirized Dean Liddell's plans to reconstruct Christ Church Cathedral.
5. She was rambling on in this way when she reached the wood: it looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the - into the - into what?" she went on.
This is a melodramatic, theatrical ges- ture. It is not an Anglo-Saxon attitude, which is only done when "happy." [TTLG, Ch.7] "Anglo-Saxon attitudes", showing figures with arms spread out, pahns up, are shown in The Caedmon Genesis c. 1000, which was exhibited at the Bodleian Library in 1863, and can be seen in Mavis Batey's The Adventures of Alice (1991), Ch.l2.
7. "It's very provoking," Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, "to be called an egg - very!" Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl. "It is a - most - provoking - thing," he said at last, "when a person doesn't know a cravat from a belt!"
Humpty Dumpty follows a proper psychological rule for when one is in a heated argument - instead of calling Alice a name, he tells her what sort of feeling her remark provokes in him - so she will know how she made him feel. Of course, he then says she has "a stupid name".
8. "I always thought they were fabulous monsters!" said the Unicorn. "Is it alive?" "It can talk," said Haigha, solemnly.
I don't suppose they had talking dolls in Dodgson's day, so this may refer to puppets. When he still lived at the Rec- tory, as a youth "with a carpenter's help, he built a mari- onette theater, composed plays, and learned to manipulate the marionette for the presentations." [Cohen, Lewis Car- roll: A Biography, Ch.l] Is there a suggestion, contrary to Aristotle, that man is not the rational animal, but the talking animal? We know there can be quite a bit of difference.
24
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What the Carpenter Said
Our own Angelica Shirley Carpenter's Lewis Car- roll: Through the Looking-Glass (A Lerner Biography), 0-8225-0073-6, (Lerner Publications, 2003, $25) is a delightfully light yet comprehensive look at Carroll's life and works, written for young readers (ages 11-17; grades 6-12). Of particular interest is the epilogue "Curiouser and Curiouser: 1 898-Present" which brings his legacy up to date.
Parodies Lost (and Found!)
Jabberland: A Whiffle Through the Tulgey Wood of "Jabberwocky " Imitations, with a fine introductory essay by our own Hilda Bohem and edited by (our own) Dayna McCausland, is a wild collection of two hundred or so parodies, from "Almamaterwocky" through "Zemowocky". Due to copyright issues the book will not be for sale and is available only to members of the LCSCanada. New U.S. members can join for us$16, international members us$18. Contact Dayna at sheerluck@sympatico.ca; P.O.Box 321, Erin, Ontario NOB ITO, Canada. Supplies are extremely limited.
Love in Bloom
Harold Bloom has a new book out with the title Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. Lewis Carroll merits six pages. Samples: "The second Alice book has a visionary otherness that I cannot locate in the first; there seems to me both aesthetic gain in sophistication, and aesthetic loss in exuberance, as you read from one book to the next." "The historical Alice Liddell was more Carroll's Dulcinea than his Beatrice..."
The book is arranged along the lines of the Kabbal- istic Sefirot. (I presume that makes the pun in his subtitle deliberate.) Carroll falls under the tenth and final one, Mal- khut, "the kingdom". "I have relied upon its deep inwardness as an attribute, and have grouped under it ten male geniuses who franscend sexuality. Malkhut is, to me, the most fascin- ating of the Sefirot, since it displays divine immanence in the kingdom of this world." Having said that, Bloom then goes on to discuss little else of Carroll aside from his sexu- ality. 0446527173, $36.
Call for Writers
"We are currently seeking qualified writers to contribute an essay on Lewis Carroll to a new five-volume encyclopedia. The Grolier Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era is intended to provide complete coverage of the social, political, and intellectual landscape of the British- dominated world during the years of the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837-1901. The encyclopedia will contain 650 signed entries, ranging in length from 500 to 4,000 words. If you are interested in contributing, please send an e-mail or letter briefly describing your qualifications; if those qualifications do not include significant publications, please
include a sample of your writing on related topics." Tom and Sara Pen- dergast. Full Circle Editorial, 428 Avenue J, Snohomish, WA 98290. 360.568-2049; 815-371-2934 fax; fullc@gte.net.
Cammarata Lucida
Adele Cammarata has published Alice Underground (Fiabesca/Stampa Altemativa 2002, 88- 7226-721-8, €10), which contains a facsimile of Carroll's manuscript and her own translation of it into Italian. The publisher's page is www.stampalternativa.it/catalogo/ fiabescayschede/fiab043.htm (the site is in Italian).
She has also written about translating the Mouse's Tale (www.bokos.it/tails.pdf) and an article about other ^ff' Italian translations in InTRAlinea magazine (Vol.5, 2002, onlme at www.intralinea.it/vol5/alice/alice.htm).
The Twain Shall Meet
The original edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) contained 174 illustrations by Edward W. Kemble, a young New York artist personally selected by Mark Twain. One of Michael Patrick Heam's footnotes (42.1) in The Annotated Huckleberry Finn (Norton, 2001) draws attention to two pictures, one in Chapter One and one in Chapter Eleven, reproduced below, with the comment that "No doubt the American artist was aware that John Tenniel drew a similar pair of pictures to illustrate Chapter 1 of TTLG, as the girl pierces through the mirror and the page."
25
What the Archbishop Found
It looks, in fact, a lot like the early Macmillan Alices — a well-worn reddish antiquarian volume of exactly the same height and depth, with a gold stamp on the spine. The Reverend Doctor Havilland Le M. Chepmell's A Short Course of History was identified by Roger Lancelyn Green (in his edition of the Diaries, Oxford, 1 954) as the source of the "driest thing I know" quoted by the Mouse after swimming to shore from the Pool of Tears. The quotation is the beginning of Chepmell's "House of Normandy" chapter, pp. 143-44, and famously begins "William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the Pope..." and ends in the middle of the sentence "But the insolence of his Normans — ", after mentioning Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria.
(Edwin and Morcar's sister Lucia was one of Dodgson's ancestors, Green tells us, as he also enlightens us that their grandmother, married to Leorfric III, Earl of Mercia, was none other than the legendary, but very real. Lady Godiva.)
A Short Course of History First Series: J. Greece. II. Rome. III. England was published in London by Whittaker and Co. in 1848, although Green gives the date as 1862, an error that has been promulgated throughout Carrollian studies, including all editions of The Annotated Alice. Presumably Green had a later edition at hand (the seventh edition is dated 1859). It is, indeed, the dullest and driest read imaginable, and one wonders if it had another association — could it have been the very book her sister was reading on the bank, "without pictures or conversations", which put Alice to sleep? Often elements from the waking world find their way into dreams: her sister's dream at the end of the Adventures mentions rattling teacups changing into tinkling sheep-bells, the Queen's cries to the voice of the shepherd-boy, and the other "queer noises" into the "confiised clamour of the busy farm-yard".
Was this the soporific that caused Alice's dream? We'll never know, but the possibility is there. . .^ :^ -
^eV^j^
' EmUySlrangaxaii e2001 eaiiAietlifcto
This fine sticker is from the "Emily the Strange" kiddy ghoul phenomenon. You can get a pack of 5 randomly chosen stickers for $8 at www.emilystrange. com/beware/accessories/stickerpak.cfm, but this may not be among them.
Carrollian Notes
Announcements
Angelica Carpenter's "Literary Gardens: Children's Litera- ture arid Garden Tour" of England which had been scheduled to take place May 17-26, 2003 has been postponed indef- initely. A brochure had been sent to all members of this Society.
Due to the paucity of submissions, and requests from some students, the deadline for the Stan Marx Fund Collegiate Essay Contest has been extended to March 31, 2003.
[Sic], [sic], [sic]
"Malice in Wonderland?" in TIME magazine, October 7*, 2002, reviewing the "Dreaming in Pictures" show and catalog as well as The Lives of the Muses, is the epitome of poor research and writing. It contains a classic boner begin- ning "Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Arthur Dodg- son,..."
Under "white-rabbit" in The Forgotten English Word-a-day Calendar by Jeffrey Kacirk (entry for November 26, 2002): "On this date in 1864, Oxford mathematician... offered a handwritten copy... to Alice Liddel. He published his soon- to-be-classic in 1865, but in its first year, the book sold fewer than fifty copies, due in part to unfavorable reviews, such as this one in Children's Books: 'We fancy that any real child might be more puzzled than enchanted by this stiff, overwrought story.'"
Steven Heller, in The New York Times Book Review (No- vember 17, 2002): "Sometimes the story demands that type, or lettering, simulate the sound, mood and even physical fraits of words and phrases... This is nothing new. In child- ren's books it dates back to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass ( 1 872), in which the description of a mouse's tail was suggestively typeset in a curlicue shape at the end of a paragraph." [Even ignoring the missing hyphen, the Mouse's Tale was of course in AW, not TTLG. Further- more, the text of the poem is not even close to a "descrip- tion of a mouse's tail".]
Salom^, Salome, Bologna
An article in the New York Times on December 3"*, entitled "Play? Opera? A Challenge to Daunt the Eye and Ear", reviewing a new avant-garde production of Oscar Wilde's Salome, refers to Robert Wilson's staging of Richard Strauss' opera based on the play, "...at La Scala in Milan 1 5 years ago, Mr. Wilson had a good cast, conducted by Kent Nagano, but his Salome, the Spanish soprano
26
Montserrat Caballe, combined breathtaking vocal beau- ty... with unseductive girth. Mr. Wilson's solution [to the problem of Salomes seductive dance], which didn't sit at all well with the singers, was to costume them in all-black dress of the sort high society might have worn at the time of the opera's composition in 1905, and then pen them onto a platform... Onstage, students from New York Univer- sity...acted out the drama. Mr. Wilson's conceits including splitting the characters among several actors and morphing the Salome tale with that of Alice in Wonderland. When the bored princess makes her entrance, wandering out onto the palace veranda, Mr. Wilson had her spinning, in an Alice- like dress designed by Gianni Versace. As embodied by the young and beautiful Jennifer Rohn, this image of Salome falling down the rabbit hole was a vision to remember lifelong."
Night of the Jabberwock
If you're ever in Monterey, California, an intriguing place for Carrollians to visit is the Jabberwock Inn, just a few blocks from the city's famous aquarium and Cannery Row. The inn has been written about before in Knight Letters 52 and 59, but here's an update, based on a recent weekend visit for my wife's birthday (and my unbirthday).
Originally built in 1 9 1 1 , the Jabberwock Inn was a large private home that has been converted into a bed-and- breakfast retreat. The house has seven bedrooms, most with views over Monterey Bay, and each room is named after some aspect of the poem: Wabe, Mimsy, Tulgey Wood, Toves, Brillig, Mome Rath, and Borogove. The facilities include a lovely half-acre garden (with fountains and a pond), free parking on a mossy cobblestone lot, and a lovely dining room and living room (with an ^W^ chess set and a few other touches). The inn's best feature is the charming glassed-in sun porch where tasty hors d'oeuvres and wine are served in the early evening, and chocolate-chip cookies and milk are available before bedtime. The sun porch also has a backwards clock straight out of Wonderland (we did not, however, grow any younger over the weekend).
The Jabberwock Inn is located at 598 Laine Street,
Monterey, California 93940, and the phone numbers are (831) 372-4777 or (888) 428-7253 (toll free). The inn also has an informative Web site at www.jabberwockinn.com where you can see pictures of each of the rooms and other facilities. Room prices range from $125 to $265 per night, and the three priciest rooms each include a king-size bed, a fireplace, and a Jacuzzi. The innkeepers are Joan and John Kiliany. I'm not sure whom I spoke to, but when I mentioned that I was a member of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, for all the reaction I got I might as well have told them that I have a Honda.
While my wife and I enjoyed our stay there, Carrollians may find the inn a little disappointing, with the Alician angle being mostly a marketing ploy — the Alice connection is not very deep. Comfy Victorian quaintnesses abound, but they are not necessarily Carrollian. A handful of Carroll books hide on a shelf by a living-room fireplace (along with Steinbeck books, since this is also Steinbeck country) but there seemed to be fewer such books than when I visited some ten years or so before. A few Alice decor- ations appear here and there around the house, some kitschy, some less so (I liked the chess set best). A small sign announcing breakfast was written backwards, and it was amusing to wonder what "Jabberwock Shampoo" might do to my hair. Breakfast was very tasty, but I could have done with more (maybe I should have had more of the cookies and milk the evening before?).
The Jabberwock Inn (below) is certainly a curiosity, and if you're in the neighborhood you might want to stay or perhaps knock on the door to visit for an hour. Carroll aficionados will find little depth or originality, but those who enjoy a good bed-and-breakfast experience are sure to delight in their visit.
-Michael Welch
27
Heart of the City by Mark TatuUi
Articles
"The Limerick is furtive and mean; You must keep her in close quarantine / Or she sneaks to the slums / And quickly becomes / Disorderly, drunk and ob- scene" by David Stewart, in Smithson- ian, September 2002, traces the history of the limerick from "Hickory, dickory, dock" to the present, and prints Carroll's "His sister, called Lucy O' Finner" effort, without mentioning that it was written when CLD was 13 and published for the amusement of his family, in the magazine called "Useful and Instructive Poetry".
Diane DeBlois' "Ephemera Bits" col- umn in the October 2002 issue of Book Source Monthly (Vol.18 no.7) is en- titled "Alice Through the Letter Box" and discusses The Wonderland Postage Stamp Case.
"H.H.Munro: A Life of Irony" by Jes- se F. Knight, in Firsts: The Book Col- lector's Magazine, September 2002, Vol. 12 no. 7, discusses his series of AW satires for the Westminster Gaz- ette (released in book form as The West- minster Alice in 1 902).
Mojo magazine, December 2002, awarded "White Rabbit" first place on the top 100 drug songs of all time. But more interestingly, they discuss the song's Spanish influences, especially Ravel's Bolero. Grace, untrue to her name, is pictured with a certain finger raised. Slick!
Andrew Hall's "Edmund Blampied: Art- ist and Illustrator" in Book and Maga- zine Collector, No. 225, Dec. 2002, shows Blampied's cover for Thomas Nelson's 1917 ^fF edition (with four illustrations by Harry Rountree). "Blampied's signature is ahnost cut off the bottom of the cover, and it may not be widely recognized that it is by him."
"Nothing On: Sex and the Victorians" by Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker, September 30, 2002, reviews the "Ex- posed: The Victorian Nude" show at the Tate Gallery including "a stupefying
Cof^f^esbondle^nts
hand-colored photograph by Lewis Carroll of a young girl posed as a Titian Venus..."
Douglas Nickel's Dreaming in Pic- tures (San Francisco Museum of Mod- ern Art and Yale University Press, 2002, $39), the catalog of his excellent show of Carroll photographs at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art, was favorably reviewed by Tessa DeCarlo in the New York Times, Aug. 11, 2002.
The Washington Post 's The Style Invi- tational contest for "Portmanteau- tapping" (Oct. 20, 2002) challenged readers to create new portmanteau words in the tradition of Lewis Carroll. Some sample published entries include the following: ''Anecdotard: an old person who keeps telling the same bor- ing stories; Dachshundheit: what you say after a dog passes gas."
Books
The Oldest Music Room in Europe: A Record of Eighteenth-Century Enter- prise at Oxford by John H. Mee (The Bodley Head; John Lane; 1911) discus- ses a "Musical Interlude" written in 1780 whose characters, named Twee- dledum and Kit Tweedledee, figure in several pasquinades referring to a con- tretemps between two Oxonian pro- fessors.
The Origin of Minds: Evolution, Uni- queness, and the New Science of the Self by Peggy LaCerra and Roger Bing- ham uses Carroll's caterpillar "to ex- plain how monoamines globally cali- brate your intelligence system". The reference appears in Chapter 5, "An- swering the Caterpillar's Question: What Size Do You Want to Be?".
A Book of Books, a collection of Abel- ardo Morell's photographs, contains selections from his earlier AW book (AX 59, p. 14). Reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. Bulfinch Press; 0821227696.
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The Mythology of Cats: Feline Leg- end and Lore Through the Ages by Gerald and Loretta Hausman has a sec- tion on Guess Who. St. Martin's Press, 1998, 0312186339; Berkeley Pub- lishing Group, 2000, 0425174492.
Through the Eyes of a Child: An Intro- duction to Children's Literature (6* Edition) by Donna E. Norton, and Saun- dra E. Norton; Prentice Hall, 2002, 013042207X; with CD-ROM en- closed, contains an article on teaching Alice by our own Monica Edinger.
Llandudno, Queen of Welsh Resorts by Ivor Wyime Jones raises the ques- tion as to whether Alice Liddell had a secret rendezvous there with Prince Leopold in 1873. ISBN 1 84306 048 5 , £ 1 5 . Landmark Publishing Ltd. , Ash- bourne Hall, Cokayne Avenue, Ash- bourne, Derbyshire DE6 lEJ, U.K.; 01335 347349; landmark@clara.net; www.landmarkpublishing.co.uk.
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, the story of a prostitute set in 1870s London, contains many Carrollian references. Harcourt, 015100692X.
Sparrow Through the Hall: A Pil- grimage Through British Christianity by our own Charlie Lovett contains many (indexed) references to Carroll and to various members of the LCSNA and the LCS(U.K.). $24, 0971977496. www.aznet.co.uk/clovett/.
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired by Fran- cine Prose (Harper Collins, $26) fo- cuses on Alice Liddell as one of her studies of modern "muscology". Reviewed in the New York Times, Sept. 22, 2002, and numerous other news- papers and journals. In the Nov. 24, 2002 San Francisco Chronicle, for example, Heidi Benson writes: "As Prose went on to discover at the library, Liddell was no mouse, no onetime muse. Being a muse was, for her, as for others, an irresistible modus operandi. 'I found out that she'd been involved with John Ruskin and had a love affair
with Queen Victoria's son,' she said. "Why is it that this isn't common knowledge?'" [Why indeed?] Her research used only conventional and outdated sources and hence her essay produces nothing new.
AW is one of the 26 works discussed in Melanie Wentz's Once Upon a Time in Great Britain: A Travel Guide to the Sights and Settings of Your Fav- ourite Children 's Stories, (St. Martin's Griffin, $16). A brief biography of each author precedes the travel guide account of the settings of the tales.
Alastair Gray's The Book of Prefaces (Bloomsbury £17) an anthology of prolegomena, includes the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark.
Random House's Modem Library ed- ition of AW&TTLG, with an intro- duction by A.S. Byatt and notes by Lynne Vallone, is now available. $9 trade paperback. 0-375-76138-1. Byatt's new novel A Whistling Woman (Knopf) also contains many Alician re- ferences.
Alles uber Alice, a new German trans- lation of Martin Gardner's fma\ Annot- ated Alice has just appeared with ex- tended notes by Friedhelm [ "Mome "?] Rathjen, who also translated Gardner's. Europa Verlag, 3-203-75950-0, €30. The text of the books was translated by Guenther Flemming.
The National Review Treasury of Classic Children 's Literature is a com- pendium of stories from St. Nicholas magazine (1874- 1930s) "personally selected by William F. Buckley, Jr." designed to "take you back to a more innocent time", and includes "Bruno's Revenge". Obtainable at the moment only through National Review at www. nationalreview.com/store/book_ treasury.asp, but will be in bookstores eventually.
Adrain Mitchell's stage adaptation of AW/TTLG. $17. Communications Group; 1840022566.
Photography: A Cultural History (Abrams, 2002) by Mary Warner Mar- ien discusses Carroll's "Beggar-Maid".
In The History of Writing: Hieroglyph to Multimedia (Flammarion, 2002), edited by Anne-Marie Christin, a chap- ter called "Typographies for Children" contains a facsimile of the mouse's tale with a short discussion. The book was first published in French in 2001.
See the USA: The Art of the American Travel Brochure by John Margolies and Eric Baker (Chronicle Books, 1999) contains a color illusfration of the co- ver of "Alice's Adventures in the New Wonderland: Yellowstone National Park".
Young Korean artist Suzy Lee's mix- ture of flat drawings and realistic pho- tographs makes a handsome picture- book, with minimal text in Italian and English. Alice in Wonderland, Corra- ini, 2002, 88-87942-27-7. €16. www. corraini.com.
Performances Noted
Southbend, Indiana's Civic Theatre put on a production oi AW directed by Jewel Abram-Copenhaver, July 5-14.
In repertoire at the LID A Project in Denver CO, and also at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival (August 2002), is a very PoMo "Alice". "Based on the mission of the exper- iments, Alice has become the first vehicle to experiment with the moments of intersection between man and machine, digital and organic, good and evil." Using various writings of Lewis Carroll as a starting point, a very polished ensemble enters murmuring a text that is broken down to letters and builds back into words. They then flow through a nonlinear sequence which roams from direct quotes to sketches enacting websites you might/might not connect with the Alician themes (militia? meat? porn?) to anagrams based on the letters that spell Lewis Carroll. See www.good-evil.org/.
Theafre X of Milwaukee brought to the stage a new adaptation of The Hunting of the Snark conceived by Kurt Hart- wig, Sept. 28-Oct. 20, 2002. Hartwig's direction possesses "a freshness, deft- ness and visual sense seldom seen", in the words of the Milwaukee Sentinel. Mary Kababik is the ringmaster in this
29
production which "begins with four black-clad actors dragging a small army of trunks and suitcases onto the stage. Lids and covers are opened, and a mena- gerie of puppets emerge... the Broker [one of the puppets] is portrayed as an abacus with feet."
Vancouver's Community Theater pre- sented/I fF on Oct. 11-12.
Brian Russo's "avowedly unsent- imental" theatrical version oi AW zi Franklin and Marshall College in Lan- caster PA (Oct. 23-Nov. 3).
The October 23, 2002 Angelo State University (San Angelo, TX) Rampage notes that ASU's Concert Chorale will present "Halloween Spooktacular II: The Nightmare Before Christmas" on Oct. 29, to include an "energetic" set- ting of "Jabberwocky".
"Lewis Carroll: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast" an adaptation of the books by M.Lee Potts and Marilyn Hetzel, presented by "The Next Stage" in late October in State College PA, was ". . .a tasty blend of pantomime and Japanese theater styles".
Akrostichon- Wortspiel (Acrostic- Word play) by Korean composer Unsuk Chin was commissioned by the Gaudeamus Foundation, and received its premiere in London on September 8, 1993 with George Benjamin conducting. The piece consists of seven nonsense poems from The Endless Story by Michael Ende and TTLG. The Guard- ian (Oct 29, 2002) reviews a recent performance by the Birmingham Con- temporary Music Group with soprano Nicole Tibbies: "Chin's Acrostic Word play was totally beguiling... a tour de force of vocal technique and sensuous, glistening textures, in which a collision of tuning systems gives the music a feeling of fragility and ambivalence."
Alice in the Shadows, Maria Bod- mann's Balinese puppetry "psychedelic Rock n' Roll shadow play" at the War- ner Grand Theater in San Pedro CA, October 30.
Daryl Bjoza's ballet /i^F will be seen at Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts, May 2-4, 2003.
Cyberspace
The Alice in Wonderland Collectors Network has risen from a deep sleep and is now on the Internet. At http:// collectalice.home.att.net/.
Keith Sheel has been appointed the new moderator of the Yahoo Lewis Carroll e-group, replacing Mike Leach.
The Lewis Carroll Society of Australia is alive and well, despite the loss of its website. The site for the Lewis Carroll fonts has similarly vanished away.
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves... " Huh? "Fun With Markov Chains" at www.eblong.com/zarf7mar- kov/ is a scrambling algorithm that takes AW as a base text and mixes it in with Hamlet in one case and the Bible books of Genesis and Revelation in an- other. The programs are downloadable if you want to mix'n'match your own.
The new International Children's Dig- ital Library (www.icdlbooks.org), which premiered on November 20 at the Library of Congress to considerable hoopla, includes a beautifully digitized AW (Samuel Gabriel, 1916), but good luck finding it. As yet, there is no searching by title, author, or keyword. The site is highly resource-intensive: don't bother with this if you don't have a high-speed internet connection and plenty of available RAM.
For the "Best Fictional Earnings Re- lease Contest" sponsored by Gregory FCA, a leading investor and public re- lations firm, entrants were instructed to pick their favorite infamous public company and rewrite its last annual earnings release in the style of a fav- orite author. Third prize ($100) went to Joanne Eglash, a developer of web- based educational software from Scotts Valley, CA, who wrote about Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in the style of Lewis Carroll. "'Curiouser and even more curiouser,' said Martha, as she stepped cleanly and in a most organized manner through the beau- tifully polished and clear Looking Glass... For investors who prefer a summary, please note that it was always 'brillig' this year. Martha and her staff successfully groomed the slithy toves.
despite their insistence on gimbling in the wabes..." See www.gregoryfca. com/irp_gfca08 1 902c.htm.
The Pathe archive of 3,500 hours of news bulletins, starting in 1902 and ending in 1970, is online at www.british pathe.com. It includes a film (circa 1950?) of 13 -year-old Ann Stephens (who made a gramophone recording of AW to benefit the children of Great Ormond Street Hospital) visiting the sick children there. This site was free when accessed but will probably begin charging for access soon.
A John Tenniel Home Page at http:// oufcnt5.open.ac.uk/~gill_stoker/ tenniel.htm is maintained by Gill Sto- ker. There is a fine critical essay on Tenniel's work on the Alice books.
All eight known illustrations of the "Wasp in a Wig" chapter have been collected at www.english-usage.com/ WaspInAWig.htm.
Renold Rose's slideshow of his photographs inspired by AW at http:// hot-buttered.com/photo/alice.htm.
"Nabokov as [AW] Translator" by Leigh Kimmel at www.geocities.com/ Athens/3682/nabokov2.html.
A page about Dali's AW with all the images at www.dalibooks.com/Alice. html.
A page about Steadman's Alice work at www.gonzo.org/hst/ralph/books/alice com.html.
Convenient portal to e-texts of Car- roll's works: http://home.earthlink. net/ -Ifdean/carroll/.
Magnifique Carroll portal en Fran- gais: http://ibelgique.ifrance.com/ Carroll/.
Magnifico Carroll portal en Espanol: www.expreso.co.cr/alicia/.
Academia
A program was held at the California School Library Association's annual conference in Sacramento CA, Nov. 1 3 : "'What is the use of a book without pictures?' thought Alice: Selecting and Using Graphic Novels to Promote Literacy".
30
The Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia is the proud new owners of the collection of papers belonging to Alice Hargreaves sold at the Soth- eby's auction in June, 2001. It includes about 80 items documenting her role in the sale of her manuscript copy of AAuG in 1928 for £15,400.
Angelica Carpenter's slide-illustrated lecture on her book (see p. 25) at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fres- no (CA) on Friday, December 6*.
Auctions
The 'Private Press Books, Illustrated and Children's Books and Related Drawings' section of the Sotheby's sale on 12 December 2002 contained a few Carroll items (lots 452-455), including an apothecary's ledger with entries relating to C.L. Dodgson and his family.
PBA Galleries has an 1866 Alice for sale with a presentation drawing by John Tenniel of the Mad Hatter. Details athttp://ww^.pbagalleries.com/search/ item.php?anr= 122931. This was in a live/electronic auction on October 20th, but did not sell. Estimate: us$30- to $40,000.
Media
Many have commented on the AW influences in the new anime Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi ("Spirited Away") by Hayao Miyazaki. Distributed by Disney, it is the first animation film in 50 years to win the top prize, the Golden Bear, at the Berlin Fibn Fest- ival.
In the recent movie Tadpole (Sig- oumey Weaver, etc.), the Central Park A W sculpture is seen in the foreground of a scene. The conversation in the background, oddly enough, concerned a love affair between a 40-year-old woman and a high-school sophomore (male). "Whether the director was intentionally referencing Carroll's sup- posed sexuality is questionable, how- ever: the sexes were switched. The dor- mouse was prominent. Highly recom- mended." -Matt Demakos
A BBC "Afternoon Play" called "Lewis Carroll's Adventures in Russia" broad- cast on July 13 "dramatises the only
foreign trip AlVs creator ever made".
"Alice Underground", a psychedelex- perimental film by Robert E. Lee set in the New York club scene, uses only a still camera. Video copies ($20) are available, which include "The Effect of Living Backward: The Making of 'Alice Underground'", www.angelfire. com/film/aliceunderground/index. html.
The British Film Institute has con- firmed that it is planning to release Jonathan Miller's legendary AW teleplay (1967) next Spring on (PAL- format) video and DVD. Stay tuned for further news.
Exhibitions
In "Faster than the Eye" (July 27- Oct.l3) at the Verba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich's installation "El Living" seemed to be an innocuous full-size living room. There was a large mirror on one wall and what seemed an identical one next to it. It was, in fact, a window into a room exactly like the one you were in, only all the objects were reversed. Somewhat discon- certing, but at least viewers knew how Alice felt.
An albumen print of Lewis Carroll's photograph of "Margaret Morrell Sleeping", circa 1873 pace Edward Wakeling, was featured in a show on dreaming at Japan's Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art.
Mary Kline-Misol, whose work was featured in AX 66 , exhibited her Alice paintings at the Blue Gallery in Kansas City MO in October, along with simi- larly-inspired works by William Rain- ey. See an online review at www.pitch. com/issues/2002-10-24/art. html/1/ index.html.
Guy Jacqmin, a French artist and the founder of the "Alice Still Alive" group of plasticians and sculptors that gathers about forty French artists inspired by Carroll and his work is organizing, for the fifth consecutive year, an exhibition this December in Paris. This year's celebrates Sainte Alice of the Roman Catholic calendar. "The main theme this year will be a confrontation between
AW and the Book of the Wonders of the World, one of the finest manuscripts in the collection of the Duke of Bur- gundy, Jean sans Peur (1371-1419), who had commissioned for it some of the greatest artists of his time to illustrate Marco Polo's journeys to the East." http://perso.wanadoo.fr/alice stillalive/ {en Frangais, naturelle- ment).
Grace Slick, the rock singer who thought that the White Knight talked backwards, has two portfolios of prints for sale, "Mad Tea Party" and "Through the Looking-Glass". The prints are also for sale individually. Contact the Fingerhut Gallery at 690 Bridgeway, Sausalito CA 94965; www.fingerhutart. com/slick. htm; 415.331-7225; fgsal @aol.com. (There are Fingerhut Gal- leries in Carmel, La Jolla, and Laguna Beach CA as well.)
Things
Peter Weever's illustrations {'"vignet- tes") from his \9%9 AW (Philomel Books U.S.; Random House U.K.) on http://peter.weevers.free. fr/. Many of the originals are for sale (£60- £400). Contact peter.weevers@wanadoo.fr.
Muldoon Elder has written two XXX- rated parodies of "Father William" — one gay, one straight — involving the ''eminence grise Pere Joseph" and Cardinal Richelieu. He will e-mail copies to anyone of legal age who requests one. info@vorpalgallery.com.
Singer Aimee Mann's new CD "Lost in Space" contains "Humpty Dumpty".
Wolfiewock's Tenniel-based "'3-D' pictures ($13) are composed of layers of inked acetate (similar to a sericel) over a black and white background. The multiple layers create the appearance of depth." http://users.erols.com/ wolfie 1 /awpics.htm.
Lynn Hanson's AW promotional pain- ting, $400. www.streetcredart.com/ generic.html?pid=l 88.
Margaret Davis' "Beware", calligraphed and illustrated excerpt from "Jabber- wocky", in an open edition linoleum block print. $20. 282 1 Truman Avenue, Oakland CA, 94605; margaret@flow-
inglass.com; (510) 569-0437; www. flowinglass.com/art/beware.html.
Carol Harper's primitive /4W^ panels of "pyrography [woodburning] and acry- lics on pine" ($125). www.sasquatch. com/~mars/CHILD/Chil.html#alice.
Vladimir Verechagin's AW etching ($200). www.picassomio.com/art/
1772/en/.
Mitchell Zwick's AW sculptures, fountains, and mirrors at www.looking glasshouse.com/.
Australian artist Jo Tuck's (mixed media on canvas) AW suite at http:// www.jotuck.com/gallery2.htm.
Erinn Larsen's .4 fF suite (oil on linen) at www.billburg.com/artists/elee/ 12.cfm.
Rita Robinson's ^4^ glassworks at www.freshfrozenglass.com/.
Jacqueline Dowling's Mad Tea Party in polymer clay ($675) at www.thejanad. com/comehither.htm.
Lyudmila Rodionova's Russian lacquer box ($275) at www.sunbirds.com/ lacquer/box/992022.
New from Disney's Halloween 2002 catalog: Tweedledum and -dee cos- tumes in adult sizes and a corre- sponding Alice in kids'. Their Holiday Preview 2002 issue has a Cheshire Cat watch ($45) and a set of A ^resin orna- ments in a bound storybook box ($32). Their Winter 2002 has a Radko® glass Alice ornament ($38) and a Cheshire Cat "fleece tunic" - a Mock Turtleneck, of course ($32.50).
Ceramicist Paul Cardew's new 2002 catalog (see also KL 66 p.20) has an entire section called "Cardew in Won- derland" with tea sets, tea pots, salt & pepper shakers and other items in lim- ited editions. Contact Cardew Design North America, Inc. at RO.Box 3989, Orange CA 92857; (877) 9teapot or (714)685.6854;~6914fax;www.card- ewdesign.com.
Bridge Records has just released "An Irving Fine Celebration at the Library of Congress". It contains his playful 1942 musical setting of "Father Wil- liam". See www.bridge records.com.
31
A fine dramatic "all-star" production of AW from NPR affiliate KCRW in Santa Monica CA stars Harry Shearer, Vin- essa Shaw (as Alice), Michael York, Rhea Perlman, Malcokn Mc Dowell, Hector Elizondo, Orson Bean, and Elliot Gould. You can listen to it on the
radio at a number of stations in South- em California (listed on their website) or over the Internet (ditto) on Christ- mas Eve and New Year's Eve from 2 to 4 p.m., or you can purchase the 2-CD set for $50. www. KCRW.com; (888) 600-KCRW.
Awards
The New York Times Book Review, December 8th, 2002. Congratulations to Taylor & Wakeling and Doug Nick- el! Both Lewis Carroll, Photographer and Dreaming in Pictures were named (together) as one of the twelve best photography books of the year. Mak- ing thirteen, when you think about it.
FEIFFER
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For help in preparing this issue thanks are due to: Earl Abbe, Fran Abeles, Joel Birenbaum, Llisa Demetrios Burstein, Sandor Burstein, Angelica Carpenter, Matt Demakos, Devra Kunm, Lauren Harman, August Imholtz, Clare Imholtz, Janet Jurist, Hugues Lebailly, Stephanie Lovett, Lucille Posner, Jenifer Ransom, Andrew Sellon, Alan Tannenbaum, Alison Tannenbaum, Edward Wakelmg, Cindy, Charlotte, & Nick Watter, Germaine Weaver, and Sue Welsch.
Knight Letter is the official newsletter of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. It is published several times a year and is distributed free to all members. Subscriptions, business correspondence, and inquiries should be addres- sed to the Secretary, P.O.Box 204, Napa CA 94559. Annual membership dues are U.S. $20 (regular) and $50 (sustain- ing). Submissions and editorial correspondence should be sent to the Editor, Box 2006, Mill Valley CA 94942.
President: Alan Tannenbaum, tannenbaum@mindspring.com Secretary: Cindy Watter, hedgehog@napanet.net Vice-President and Knight Letter Editor: Mark Burstein, wrabbit@worldpassage.net Lewis Carroll Society of North America Home Page: www.lewiscarroll.org
32 ^ Since this is issue LXX, it's XXL!!
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