The song of the goat fills my heart in the night

A brief break from hunting Snark …

Alice in Wonderland is the Admirable Carroll's most famous work and I thought it high time to discuss some of its lesser-known translations, in particular, Áloþk's Adventures in Goatland (Áloþk üjy Gígið Soagénliy). It's available from Amazon here, UK buyers go to my "Available from this Artist" for the UK link.

It's been back-translated into English by Byron Sewell (the infamously good-humored Carrollian and bon vivant), published by Michael Everson at Evertype Publications and illustrated by this artist.

Let's let Byron do the talking for a change … 

Róaž Wiðz (1882-1937), the locally-admired though otherwise little-known Zumorgian translator, spent seventeen years of his miserable life (when he wasn't tending to his beloved goats) translating Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" into Zumorigénflit and transposing it into Ŋúǧian culture.

Sadly, Ŋúǧ was swallowed up by the Soviet Union in 1947. Most of its citizens were either purged (lined up and summarily shot when they refused to combine their goats into a communal herd) or transported to the Gulag for political re-education and attitude adjustment … 

For those interested in such esoteric things, "Áloþk üjy Gígið Soagénličy" was first published by the Itadabükan Press in the capital city of Sprutničovyurt in 1919. The city, which was mistakenly thought to be a German forward supply area, was literally flattened and burned to the ground by Royal Air Force saturation bombing in 1943, and all that remains of it are a few remnants of the ancient Palace's foundations and a gigantic reinforced concrete statue of Joseph Stalin, whose face has been shattered by what was probably machine gun target practice.

The original story has here been updated to modern times, as if this strange, harsh, and dangerous land still existed in the modern world. It doesn't, except in my imagination and that of Mahendra Singh, whose heart swells with the Song of the Goat …

The book comes with a glossary and besides being a very funny book to read (especially for anyone who loves  the Alice books), my own meager, visual contribution is meant as an homage to the great Sir John Tenniel. Until you've inked in another illustrator's footsteps, you can't truly know him … 

And for those who wonder about such things, this artist really did spend many happy years of his life tending and milking dairy and meat goats (French Alpine and Nubian mostly) and despite the urban Quebecois blight I live in now, la chanson du chevre still fills my heart at night … 

The ladies of Unicorn Farm contemplate things …

Full fathom five thy snark lies

NB. Before we get snarking, I urge you to read Tom Spurgeon's interview with Alexander Theroux, whose book, The Strange World of Edward Gorey is being re-issued by Fantagraphics.

Needless to say, I'm a Gorey-maniac and the interview is worth reading, especially for any one contemplating a life in the world of book illustration. At one point Tom asks Alexander why Gorey was (and is) so neglected by comix fans … I think I'll raise my inky hand and answer that one: because too many comix readers are visually infantilized from childhood by a relentless barrage of visual crap … the depth and complexity of good cross-hatching overwhelms their medulla oblongatas. Just a thought.

Meanwhile, back on Snark Island …

The Butcher’s ingenious plan is accomplished, as we see above, by first opening one of the doors of perception that are so handily scattered about my GN version of The Hunting of the Snark. Beyond this door lies a dismal and desolate valley where he can sally to his heart’s content, undisturbed by his too-frequent fellow man.

These sort of desolate Valleys of the Shadows of Various Deaths weighed heavily upon Victorian sensibilities, lurking as they did amidst the poetry of Lewis Carroll, Kings David-and-James and Lord Tennyson alike. Vast armies of betanomic chasseurs, semi-anointed sinners and gin-pickled light-cavalrymen were regularly herded into their several depths, there to endure the shot and shell of secular and sacred verse competing mano a mano, or to be more exact, pied à pied. Strong stuff but the Butcher seems up for it, he fears no evil nor anapests at all — what ho for the crystalline noggin of feckless youth!

If all this sounds a bit too allusive for you, why, there’s another picture done by another artist, a long time ago, of another inquisitive Carrollian protagonist bent upon making her own separate sally. It’s a very good drawing and I have half-a-mind to snatch it away from its rightful owner and carry it off to some desolate spot unfrequented by man where I can copy it to my heart’s content, by printing it in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen … an infinite plenum of poetical kings, lords, dons and even nudists charging forth from this very door, all of 'em dragooned into our Snark Hunt!
__________

NB. Those are snarks that were his eyes; nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer an inky-change

The bellman always rings thrice …

In honor of nothing in particular, we'll devote this week's posting to an in-depth look at the Bellman (as shown above), the presiding genius and master of ceremonies of Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark.

Readers who care to do so may remember that the Bellman appears in the very first line of the Snark, crying: Just the place for a Snark! This is of course, a tautology (and a rather clever parody of the traditional Homeric invocation of the Muse) and not the first which this avuncular, cozily insane personage will commit. Other Snarkologists have already pointed out that the Bellman may well have been based on an eponymous officer at Christ Church College, "Le Bellman", whose job it was to ring a bell whenever some particularly inert don had finally popped off for good.

Of such grim details are both great poetry and academic life made! An insane man armed with a large, blunt, heavy metal-and-wooden object with which he roams our poem and Oxford alike, announcing the beginning of the verses and the ending of some other poor college-wallah's life. No wonder this illustrator saw fit to flesh out this lugubrious person's person with the above drawing.

The sharp-eyed reader who eats his carrots will instantly ferret out, in his offhand, weaselly ferret-like manner, the fleur-de-lys motif lurking in the wallpaper. This outbreak of French monarchism has been induced by the Bellman's notorious insistence upon the Rule of Three which occurs immediately afterwards in the same opening stanzas:

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.

Such pronouncements reek of royal diktats to this artist's ear; and furthermore, the trefoil motif nicely complements the trinitarian obsessions of what we now call the Clochetic Rule of Three. Learned Snarkologists have found all manner of historical riffraff lurking inside this Rule: a reference to a Victorian mathematical classroom crib, perhaps a jab at the Mad Monadist, Charles Peirce and his triunary blatherings, or it could even be a clever Protosurrealist, anti-anachronistic reference to cybernetics and human cognition and crypto-Catholicism.

But we here at Chez Snarque are made of sterner stuff! We think that the Bellman is nutters because he just is, and we've dug up some really cool facts to support our Nutter Theory. Firstly, the Bellman's odd physical appearance is based upon that of Sir John Tenniel, the quick-fingered illustrator of both of Carroll's Alice books, and a rascally bon vivant, to boot! This cyclopean ink-wallah looked the part, indeed!


SIR JOHN TENNIEL

Secondly, Sir John's illustrations for Carroll included several drawings of the White Knight, that avuncular, cozily insane personage who assists young Alice in her regal quest (zut! more monarchism!) in Through The Looking Glass. Well-oiled Carrollians will grunt appreciatively at all this, knowing that the White Knight was a stand-in for Carroll himself, who was notoriously shy about being bruited about in public as a avuncular, cozily insane personage.

Which leads us to our third observation, and hence, owing to the Clochetic Rule of Three, our self-evident, truly definitive and tyrannically final royal diktak upon the entire matter: the following drawing by Sir John of the Admirable Carroll in mufti as a White Knight who bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain Bellman trying pass himself off as — gasp! — Sir John Tenniel disguised as a certain Christ Church don named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who had a penchant for going out in public as none other than — gasp again! — Lewis Carroll!


THE WHITE KNIGHT … OR IS HE?

Well, I think that just about wraps it up for both the Bellman's little scheme of trinitarian cross-dressing and more importantly, for whatever little standing I still possess amongst legitimate Carrollian circles.

No, no applause, please, I have more simple tastes. Just rattle your kippered herrings or something like that, I'm off for a nice lie-down with some hot-gin-and-nautch-girl-compresses. I feel a lynch mob coming on …

Fit the Fifth, Page 30, Panel 2 … boojums to right of them, boojums to left of them

Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan
For making a separate sally;
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man,
A dismal and desolate valley.

The Butcher’s ingenious plan is accomplished, as we see above, by first opening one of the doors of perception that are so handily scattered about this Hunting of the Snark. Beyond this door lies a dismal and desolate valley where he can sally to his heart’s content, undisturbed by his too-frequent fellow man.

These sort of desolate Valleys of the Shadows of Various Deaths weighed heavily upon Victorian sensibilities, lurking as they did amidst the poetry of Lewis Carroll, Kings David-and-James and Lord Tennyson alike. Vast armies of betanomic chasseurs, semi-anointed sinners and gin-pickled light-cavalrymen were regularly herded into their several depths, there to endure the shot and shell of secular and sacred verse competing mano a mano, or to be more exact, pied à pied. Strong stuff but the Butcher seems up for it, he fears no evil nor anapests at all — what ho for the crystalline noggin of feckless youth!

If all this sounds a bit too allusive for you, why, there’s another picture done by another artist, a long time ago, of another inquisitive Carrollian protagonist bent upon making her own separate sally. It’s a very good drawing and I have half-a-mind to snatch it away from its rightful owner and carry it off to some desolate spot unfrequented by man where I can copy it to my heart’s content, by printing it in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen … an infinite plenum of poetical kings, lords, dons and even nudists charging forth from this very door, all of 'em dragooned into our Snark Hunt!

Fit Three, Page 21, Panel 2 … this snark is your snark, this snark is my snark

" 'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!'
"It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul,
When I think of my uncle's last words:
And my heart is like nothing so much as a bowl
Brimming over with quivering curds!

The crossing of international frontiers whilst engaged in the hot pursuit of a Snark is no excuse for scofflawyery or other antisocialism. We see here a young Surrey fellaheen, a Baker-disguised-as-Lewis-Carroll by trade, who is preparing his claim for refugee status on the grounds of Boojum persecution. Rendered supine by his well-documented apprehension of meeting a Boojum through no fault of his own, he remains a-bed to conserve precious forensic evidence, ie. decervellage and involuntary dairy-product substitution of major organs. His parents bid him a tearful, wooden goodbye. His uncle, a Major General doubling in the role of Psychopomp-cum-coyote (thus saving this artist considerable ink and labor), carefully peruses a Customs and Border Protection Declaration Form …

1. Declare all fetishes, such as smiles, soap, forks, etc., that you might have on your person for the purpose of hunting Snarks. Please have them unpacked and ready for inspection upon your arrival. The time for observation is limited and we mustn’t hold up others!
2. Notify the authorities if you are approached by anyone offering to distort the relative proportions of your surroundings. Any illicit trafficking in the amorous gigantism of the inanimate world, whether voluntary or not, may cause permanent semiotic confusion.
3. Please stay in line. Running into another line, or enjambment, might cause injury, disfigurement or even loss of life and limb. All lines should be end-stopped and masculine rhymed as befits true English nonsense.

And to where is our Baker emigrating, you might ask? Perhaps, like the late, great Hedly Lamarr, he is fleeing this poem for another, hailing a hansom cab (with ugly driver) and demanding to be taken out of this stanza to a less paranoid quatrain … where your wretched refuseniks of tired masses huddle to be free, tally ho!

Fit Two, Page 12, Panel 2 … English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water ...

January 27th, 1832 is the birthday of Charles Dodgson, who passed away January 14th, 1898. The former preceded the latter, as befits an Eminent Victorian. Coincidentally, the English poet and author Lewis Carroll also died on the 14th, last Monday, 13 days before his birthday on the 27th, next Sunday.

As I have noted once before, this befits the author of The Hunting of the Snark, a poem whose composition was finished before it was begun.

Repeat the previous paragraph to fulfill the Clochetic Rule of Three and as a reward for your truthiness, you may have a slice of the birthday panel shown above. Delicious, eh? Some nice bits of Sir John Tenniel, a juicy morsel of Dora Maar (with a succulent Alfred Jarry center) and all of it garnished with the abraded glyphs of Oysters à la Alberto Savinio!

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NB. Congratulations to the LCSNA and Messers P.L. Heath, J. Dixon and L. Carroll on their well-done and informative publication of "La Guida di Bragia". This work has been obliquely referred to before in these pages, during a meandering blather on Chirico and his brother Alberto Savinio. It seems that the heady scent of Anglo-Italian Railway-Surrealism is in the air … bravo!