We're frolicking through yet another exegesis of my Snark GN … deep in the anapestic bowels of Fit the Second …
As the nurturing, endlessly comforting snows of Québec begin to numb our cerebella at
chez snarque, we
have ample time to reflect upon the old adage: good artists borrow;
great artists steal (and never from the merely good artists). I've
mercilessly looted the Belgians, French and Italians, so the inspiration
for this
stanzel will have to be purloined from the Germans.
Easier
said than done, I soon discovered. Friedrich Nietzsche (The Bonnets)
and Martin Heidegger (The Barrister) refused to countenance my scheme
but Karl Marx (The Banker), that preternaturally prescient Protosurrealist,
quickly came up with some snappy double-talk to justify my larcenous
designs. He pointed out that crime is actually good for the likes of
Lewis Carroll and his ilk (double-plus-good, in fact):
"The
criminal produces not only crime but also the criminal law; he produces
the professor who lectures on this law and even the inevitable textbook
… the whole apparatus of the police and criminal justice … also art,
literature, novels, even tragic dramas … he (the criminal) gives a new
impulse to the productive forces."
That's pretty juicy
stuff, say no more, Karl! Within minutes, my crack team of
ninja-idiot-savant-cat-burglar-draftsmen had illicitly purloined and
haphazardly reproduced
this picture of a giant thumb lusting after his maternal walnut from none other than Max Ernst, the noted German surrealist and an echt bon vivant with the consummate Carrollian taste to die the day before he was born.
Of
course, you, the dear reader, may ask: what's this picture got to do
with a vessel being snarked in tropical climes? I can only reply: It's a
fair cop, guv'nor!
____________________
NB.
Max Ernst's illustrations for the Snark are dadamax-loplop-good! One
may wonder what Lewis Carroll would have made of them, but by using our Protosurrealist critical apparatus we can safely say: yes.
