I must beg the reader's indulgence for the worse-than-usual blathering of this posting; my head is addled by a strong cold and gales of sneezing fits and suchlike …
In lieu of my usual tightly-argued Snarkian exposition, today we shall relax over a steaming hot drawing of the HMS Snark steaming off towards parts unknown whilst the natives regale themselves upon some semio-alimentary flotsam and jetsam.
And what does this have to do with Lewis Carroll? How does this pertain to the Hunting of the Snark? Could it be that this oddly familiar picture of two homunculi gorging upon these eroded, oneiric pictoglyphs is a symbol of something else? And the HMS Snark, can this hitherto undescribed vessel bearing its nonsensical crew on their futile quest to capture a non-existent beast, can it All Mean Something Else?
Symbols, symbols everywhere and not a drop to think! From whence comes this compulsion, dear reader, to, well, read meaning into everything you see? This picture which so fetchingly depicts nothing in particular does so in a certain coy manner hinting at some underlying pattern of meaning. But is it possible that the pattern's meaning is itself, and nothing more? 'Tis odd indeed how certain readers assume that the general objectivity of reading (and seeing) implies that what is read (or seen) must, ipso facto a priori & hey diddle diddle, be composed of some meaning beyond the reader themselves.
Oh, how we Snark Hunters yearn for the Platonic Ideal of the Reader To Come, the Super-Reader of Prophecy, who will disregard all petty illusory meanings and read only Themselves into the pure Text! Of such weighty matters composed of a sound and fury signifying nothing is our Snark Hunt set upon. Food for thought indeed, gluttonous Walruses and Carpenters!
"A whole good book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant." (CLD, letter to "The Lowrie Children", 1896 or 1897)
ReplyDeleteSo much for thermodynamics, eh, Goetz?
ReplyDeleteYou got it right as always. Although entropy would grow anyway, we altruistically help a little bit to speed up this otherwise much too boring process. Using thermodynamics also helps to toast cheese, to fritter wigs, to make candle ends and to fry opportunism which then quickly turns into heroism. Just strike a light.
ReplyDelete