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We continue with Fit the Fourth of my GN version of The Hunting of the Snark (or as I like to call it, my Precious) …
The story so far … a darkness has fallen upon the land and there are
B-Boyz abroad … they search for the one snark, the Baker’s-Bane of
eldritch lore … the one snark to rule them all, the one snark to find
them, the one snark to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Both
Lewis Carroll and J.R.R. Tolkien were Oxford men and both had
full-blown language manias. We’ve already seen how the Forks and Hope
refrain of the Snark (if not
the entire poem) was begat by the Old Norse galdors, those pagan charms
from the same realm of verse which Tolkien plundered so fruitfully. We
can also classify Carroll’s Snark/Boojum (Snarquus boojum) in the same genus as Tolkien’s Ring (Annulus horribilis), the genus of all imaginary, highly sought-after and utterly annihilating thingamabobs or such-like fritter-my-wigs (or what fast-food-obsessed Americans call a MacGuffin).
In
addition, both men’s œuvres sternly eschewed romance except in the most
cursory way. Hence, it is with a bit of a naughty giggle that I’ll let
you have a quick peek at this picture of the Beaver showing off a bit of
ankle! Hubba hubba, these Carrollians know how to live it up! The
Beaver is obviously inebriated with her vampish power over the stupid
and stout Baker, who has also succumbed to the heady bacchanals of this
metamorphic circus! His wink (poorly rendered here, I admit, the result
of using second-grade fresh india ink instead of the real, silken-smooth
article) suggests to us his Houyhnhnmic approval of the Carrollian
portmanteau which tops off this sinnful stanza : gallumph!
All of which begs the question — what on earth has this to do with J.R.R. Tolkien?
What on earth possessed me to follow this discombobulated line of
addled thinking comparable to the meanderings of a slightly concussed
bee?
To which I must reply, in the words of yet another celebrated Oxford man: ignorance, madam, pure ignorance!
Dear readers and fellow Snark Hunters: I've been remiss in updating this on-going exegesis of my GN version of The Hunting of the Snark, owing to various family crises and an endless succession of illustration rush jobs … I apologize for the inconvenience. In any case, we are returning to Fit the Fourth, The Hunting, where the B-Boyz are girding their loins for their final confrontation with the Snark. The scene has been set in a circus …
The above stanza may be a bit unclear to some readers (particularly
those possessing an iota of common sense). The Butcher, seen above as a
lugubrious sort of rude mechanical’s nightmare of an
Easter-Island-Pierrot, is requesting the Bellman to formally introduce
him to the Snark whenever they might encounter it. The Bellman is
noncommittal, stating that either the introduction* or the meeting
itself (or both) is entirely contingent upon the weather.
What
gives, Lewis Carroll? Are we still hunting snark or are we just marking
time now? Are we waiting for Godot or even his Edwardian precursor, Mistuh Kurtz? Very well then, so be it! We shall once again
call upon Oscar Wilde for some quick and snappy enlightenment. Being
both Irish and dry-witted, he was particularly qualified to make the
following pronouncement upon the English and their mildewed sense of
meteorology :
"Pray don't talk
to me about the weather … Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I
always feel quite certain that they mean something else.”
Following
this trail of bread crumbs deeper into the naughty forest of edible
children, we stumble over the twitching presence of the Great Cham
himself, Dr. Johnson, who tossed off this trite observation with his customary gravitas:
“It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.”
A
thing that always means something else, a thing that is always the
prime topic of discussion … hmmm … we will proceed by mentally
triangulating all of this with our above, freshly-minted illustration of
a Bellman under the weather.
End result? A compact semioglyph of
an Englishman feeling out of sorts because he is compelled by national
habit to say something that always means something else, in short, to say the thing that was not!
Yoicks, the game’s afoot at last! Behind the jolly good sport of our
Snark Hunt, behind the labyrinthine hedgerows of English Nonsense, we
have once again detected the spoor of that irascible Yahoo, Dean Swift!
Oh, to say the thing that is not
is all the rage these days, you add a dollop of Nonsense to it and it
will cover a veritable multitude of sins, not the least of which is my
penchant for the most byzantine mixing of metaphors yet known to man!
To horse, to Houyhnhnm, the Yahoos are let loose for there’s a scent of Snark in the wind and the weather’s fine!
_____________________
*One can imagine the grim consequences of
any letter of introduction to a beast such as a Snark or even, heavens
forfend, a Boojum! Pity the poor Butcher as he hands over his letter to
some supercilious flunky in a cavernous waiting room, the contents of which
letter are invisible to him but which we already have guessed to be a simple directive of utter Boojumistic malevolence — keep this Butcher running!
