Monday, January 20, 2014

Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are snark made!


 
We're plodding through yet another exegesis of my Snark GN …  deep in the anapestic bowels of Fit the Second …
 
The original illustration by Holiday of this Universal Map is, to be honest, a little trite. It's obvious that the poor man was trying to economize on india ink and pen nibs. However, as the 11th Commandment reminds us: thou shalt not speak ill of another artist, particularly when they are dead and defenseless (the precise state in which their work is best appreciated and appreciates best).

I felt that I could do better. I assumed the traditional artist's position of cogitation whilst supine on my charpoy. I puffed upon the hookah proferred me by the Assamese chorus-girl who also pressed my feet, the predominant organ of mentation in my species. I was, of course, familiar with the etymology of the word "map", which ultimately conjured up the hebraic motif of a cloth which conceals and a cloth which reveals, all of which I deftly distilled into "what's-behind-curtain-number-four" and "the-Freudian-Slip".

But still … it was obvious … too obvious, perhaps. All the better for my class of readers! Starting with a gratuitious insult to Henry Holiday I had mentally arrived at a hookah-puffing Jewish savant peddling obscurantism to a witless Bellman in a Cairene souk. In the distance I could hear the blood-curdling screams of native children conjugating French verbs. I paid them no heed! I bent over my drawing board, pen in hand, my thoughts feverishly coagulating in a vivid mental maelstrom of mixed metaphors and incongruous images! Two weeks ago I couldn't even spell "artist", now I are one!

2 comments:

  1. Perhaps Holiday was not guilty of saving ink. Instead, Dodgson may have saved some money by not asking Holiday to come up with the map. Dodgson just gave a simple sketch to the compositor in the printing shop, who then quickly arranged a map using whiskers to scratch some lines into the map and feathers to bite the plate. Then simple movable types were used for the text.

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  2. Yes, to bite the plate, sounds like William Blake and his infernal, corrosive methods. From Blake to Carroll is just a small step. And from there to a nice cup of tea, yet another small step.

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