Monday, December 12, 2011

Fit 7, pg. 74/2 … black and white and snark all over


In an earlier stanzel we subjected The Banker/Karl Marx to the indignities of vamping as a perfumed houri in the lascivious environs of a Turkish harem but that is nothing to his current employment in a Carrollian minstrel show. 

Yes, the Bandersnatch has worked its magic at last, the hypnotic spell of the Orient has done its hypno thing and both reader and Snarquista stand amazed at this climactic thing-um-a-bob at the heart of Fit the Seventh.

Reflexive readers will grasp that there is a bit of artistic commentary going on here, most of it focussed upon Victorian British attitudes towards their Indian subjects but lighter-hearted readers can just go ahead and giggle up their mulligatawny soup whilst sitting in their bungalow, pajama clad and taking a good dekko at this latest instalment of The Hunting of the Snark.

And why not? It's all Nonsense and has hardly any bearing on anything at all except whatever I've surreptitiously meant it to have, ie. it's a wonderful thing to be seen!

Clear as rain, I should think.

NB. My memory is its usual swiss cheese holey thing but I remember reading somewhere of a minstrel show version of the Snark performed in the USA shortly after its publication … perhaps one of Doug Howick's more startling discoveries?

7 comments:

  1. Mahendra & Readers: The reference to this is:
    "SP 01 PD ML 1883 - The Hunting of the Snark or The Professor's Dream in a Prologue and Five Acts by Marshall Locke: 1883. A copy of the original manuscript held in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Pp. 108. Available as a pdf download from: http://www.archive.org/details/huntingofsnarkor00lock " Doug H.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Doug! Actually, I'm not startled by any of your fascinating discoveries & research goodies, you seem to have an uncanny, bellman-like talent for unearthing these things.

    This must surely be one of the oddest bits of Snarkiana ever found.

    ReplyDelete
  3. There are some copies of a recent print-on-demand reprint currently available on eBay.

    ReplyDelete
  4. time oriented (after Lewis Carroll) / tiempo orientado (after Lewis Carroll)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WoauqesNjM&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

    ReplyDelete
  5. thank you, Laura … that is assuming, of course, that all the clocks are set at 42 o'clock.

    ReplyDelete