Fit Two, Page 12, Panel 1 … oh, my decacephalic, clochetic captain

A quick-thinking Silesian photographer captures the rare spectacle of a school of puppetfish (Puppespielen bellmerensis*) disporting themselves in the mangrove-shoals of the River Spree while the HMS Snark heads out to sea on its final voyage … a wordless panel, as befits this week in which we observe the January 14th deathday of Lewis Carroll …

O Bellman! my Bellman! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, your bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring …
_______________________________

*This particular taxonomic, visual and surrealist reference must remain somewhat vague. But what a draftsman! Perhaps the best of the last century … you google at your own risk. NSFW.

Fit Two, Pages 10 and 11 as a Spread … le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau

Shhhhhh, we’re hunting Snark! We have been tracking a magnificent specimen for over eight months and I think we have it cornered now, here in the thick undergrowth of pages 10 and 11.

Weapons at the ready, we plunge in! A brief, violent struggle and we re-emerge with our prey, securely trussed and in the bag! But wait, what’s this? Not a Snark at all, but rather — Henri Matisse, Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Sigmund Freud, René Magritte, Théodore Géricault, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico and Yves Tanguy! Not a Snark, not even a Boojum — just a plenum of dead Continentals reeking of turpentine, cigars and cheap plonk. We return to camp with our luckless prey, chastened and humiliated.

Later that night the quintessential protosurreal big-game hunter, Louis Aragon, waxes poetic on the pleasures of the chase as he sinks deeper into his cups …

"It was a time when, meeting in the evening like hunters after a day in the field, we made the day's accounting, the list of beasts we had invented, of fantastic plants, of images bagged."

We turn to him, a knowing smile upon our lips … yes, M. Aragon, why not? We roughly thrust him into our game bag alongside the others, those other exquisite corpses … the perfect bait for a Snark! Drink that new wine now, Louis!

Auld Lang Snarkyn

This New Year's Eve greeting from all of us at chez snarque will not only convey our best wishes for your future prosperity and happiness but more importantly, serve as a suprachromatic hypercognitive post-bibulative remedy, ie., a New Year Day pick-me-up guaranteed to open the eyes of even the most inert dionysiacs and bacchantes.

Special thanks to my 3-month old nephew, Leopold, who so kindly lent himself to the production of this garish, yet genuinely protosurrealist illustration. I have come to the conclusion that the true, genuine, singular and ineffable Meaning of the Snark can only be apprehended by a cheerfully small human being in a funny hat and plastic loincloth with an insatiable, drooling, passion for women's breasts. Nonsense is this young fellow's meat and drink!

Happy Snark Hunting in 2008, with forks and hope and railway-shares for all!

Boojamus in excelsis!

Snark hunting is passé this festive week, this being a time of general goodwill and peace on earth, etc. Hunting anything with forks and hope is right out, which should be a comfort to all Snarks wishing to take a few days off with their families.

And I'm certain that all such nonsensical beasts would express along with me (if anyone ever bothered to ask them), the most heartfelt best wishes to everyone who has so kindly written to me or taken the trouble to encourage others to view my humble efforts, in particular: La source aux bois, Stochastic Bookmark, Michael Sporn Animation, Scott Sharplin's Infinite Number of Monkeys and especially the truly erudite Snarkologist, Doug Howick. All of the above are the most sporting-type fellow snarquistes you could wish for.

As a small holiday token of my gratitude (and another manifestation of my relentlessly misplaced and futile commercial instincts), I offer my readers the screensaver seen above (1280x1024). It is eminently suitable for the desktops of all cubicle-trapped office drones who entertain idle fantasies of a tropical cruise in this, my private world … the best of all possible worlds …

For those who revel in such minutiae, a 1024x768 version is available here and a 1280x854 beastie is lurking here.

Enough of talk, so, if you don't object, my dear, we'll try a glass of bitter beer. I think it looks inviting.

Fit Two, Page 11, Panel 3 … Spatial Education

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

And so, even the least of the Bellman's hopes shall be occidentally disoriented. What wind blew you hither, noble Bellman? Not the ill wind which blows no man to good. Nor that wind which is winding the watch of your wit; so that by and by it will strike.

I think this wind is what the learned scholastic Flann O'Brien would call the ultimate and inexorable and supreme pancake at the back of the whole shooting match, ie., omnium. And what is this omnium of this wind that we hear so much of on the tellyvision? It is the essential, inherent, interior essence which is hidden inside the root of the kernel of everything and it is always the same. The bane of Booja* and Bellmen alike, the curse of the drinking classes, this here omnium-wind is the wind of an indefinite divisibility.

_______________________

* The nominative plural of boojum is booja, this particular species of the genus Snark being neuter in nature — Snarkus boojum. The verb itself is regular, of course: booja, boojas, boojat, boojamus, boojatis, boojant; although the correct orthography should really be BOOIVM, BOOIA, etc.

Fit Two, Page 11, Panel 2 … Heute sind wir im Ernst!

He was thoughtful and grave — but the orders he gave
Were enough to bewilder a crew.
When he cried "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!"
What on earth was the helmsman to do?
Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked."


As the nurturing, endlessly comforting snows of Québec begin to numb our cerebelli 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 stanza 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.

Fit Two, Page 11, Panel 1 … Tingle-Bell Rock

This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out
That the Captain they trusted so well
Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
And that was to tingle his bell.

Apropos of nothing in particular … Eugène Delacroix pooh-poohed maritime disasters and English literature, both of them subjects dear to my heart …

"… I have been reading the story of a shipwreck by Edgar Allan Poe, where the survivors remain in the most horrible and desperate situation for fifty pages on end — nothing could be more boring. Here we have an example of foreign bad taste. The English, German and other non-Latin peoples have no literature because they have no taste or proportion … they drown one beneath a flood of detail that takes away all the interest."

Later that same evening, over a beaker of pure rainwater, he tossed off this observation:

"Lord Byron praised gin as his Hippocrene, because it made him bold … happy are they who, like Voltaire and other great men, can reach a state of inspiration on fresh water and plain living."

So, you want fresh water and plain living with no details? Very well! Get on this sinking raft, Eugène! You did it for Théodore Géricault, you can do it for me! Down there in front, behind the Bellman with your arms outstretched and quit your whining, this ain't no alexandrine hémistichery — this here's Lewis Carroll! Tingle that bell!

-------------------------------------------------

NB. I have increased the mineral content of Delacroix's head to compensate for his natural Gallic bouyancy and to highlight his affinity for impersonating an Easter Island moia.

Fit Two, Page 10, Panel 3

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!
"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best —
A perfect and absolute blank!"


Yet another shameless Magritte pastiche, and not the last one to grace these pages, I'll wager. Shameless — the 10th Muse of Protosurrealism!

Even more shameless — this insistence that the crew of the HMS Snark use the French language for navigational purposes when it is clearly evident to anyone who has ever been lost at sea that English is the natural language of confusion. This is easily verified. Stand on a streetcorner in any francophone city and ask a stranger: where am I? If necessary, pull at shirtsleeves and wave your arms, speak very slowly while pronouncing every phoneme at the utmost decibel level.

I shall be observing you from inside the comfortable vantage point of a nearby bottle of plonk. Do not make eye contact with me or else — sapristi! Garçon, call the police, this crazy-man-anglais-cowboy-streetperson is bothering me!

Words, words, words … if only they had the decency to cover themselves up, like the Bellman & Company. They have no loyalty, they can't be bothered to mean anything anymore, they're shameless!

Fit Two, Page 10, Panel 2

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

The original illustration by Holiday of this Universal Map is, to be honest, a bit 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!

Fit Two, Page 10, Panel 1

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies —
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face!

There are some who might say this artist's conception of the Bellman is a base and underhanded attack upon the same, suggesting as it does that the Bellman was literally birdbrained and furthermore, that his colleagues (depicted here and here) possessed the collective wisdom and general prescience of a flock of chickens on the way to the abattoir.

But this is not the case.

I put it to you that the English penchant for all things avian is well-known. I put it to you that Lewis Carroll populated his verse and prose with many avian and semi-avian portmanteaux (or portmantanimaux?) such as the Jubjub Bird and the Borogrove.

I put it to you that the Bellman has suffered the ill-effects of a Violent Unknown Event and that he has metamorphasized into an avian state common amongst avant-garde English cineastes. The wisdom on his face is actually the smug look of a sporting wallah who finally knows for certain which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Fit One and Two, Pages 8 and 9 as a Spread … Dessin Nouveau

The most astute reader will have noted that five weeks have elapsed with nary a quotation nor quip from The Hunting of the Snark. What does all this mean? From whence come these images of the HMS Snark drifting rudderless, porpoiseless, perhaps even cucumberless in the salad season?

This is no sin of omission. This is artistic license run amuck … we are reading between the lines* … we are drawing between the words (to dispense with the words in a graphic novel one must dispense with the novelty of grafting words). We are doing — dessin nouveau! So just chill, baby, and dig this frabjous double-page spread.

___________________


NB. Kudos to Mister Nnyhav, who has correctly pointed out the similarities between 'pataphysics and the still-evolving school of Protosurrealism. However, one must always remember that the latter invariably requires the deliberate substitution of one's past for one's future. Ergo, 'pataphysics is a reaction before the action of Protosurrealism.

*Remember, snarkology recapitulates parisology. Parisology is the subaudition of the protosurreal. Protosurrealism is resipiscence before the fact (eg. antediluvian postlapsarianism, subterrannean ultramontanism, etc).

Fit Two, Page 9

The Bellman's speech is of that particular British provenance yclept "fruity". Not so much "plummy" but rather … "peachy". If one removes the fuzzy skin thereof (the burr, so to speak) one is left with a nectarine. This fruit (spelled n-e-c-t-a-r-i-n-e but pronounced "stuffed cabbage") was the preferred nutrition of most cavemen and it was they who first domesticated the dog.

We see here a sample of that species, a young pup named Laelaps, who attends upon his master's fruity voice. And what does he hear? A sonorous mussitation which leaves no impression upon him at all, for, as Thomas Aquinas noted, dogs have no souls. Hence their proverbial high fidelity is but a marketing ploy.

A dog, a peach, a gramophone — after all these years, my own 3-piece jazz combo! At last, I can take a bath. And just in time too, my gin-driven ink-pen's almost run dry.

Fit One, Page 8, Panel 3

What is surrealism? The simultaneous memory of everything. What is protosurrealism? The same as above with the added frisson of remembering an impossible future.

What is the final panel of Fit the First? A protosurrealist Narrenschiff patched together from semiotic pentimenti and oneiric palimpsets, a carte-de-visite of the Victorian ideal of the future, an artifact drifting down the estuary of the Mississippi … the Amazon … the Thames … the Congo …

"We said there warn't no home like the ol' HMS Snark, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but the Snark don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on her.

"But when we reach the sea we'll build a bigger ship! What great treachery that will be! Then we shall control every bathing machine and produce history as others produce plays. I, the Bellman, the wrath of god!"

The Bellman ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. "We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Butcher, suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky — seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

"The horror! The horror!"

Fit One, Page 8, Panel 2 … l'après-midi d'une castor

Declaimed by a drowsy Beaver at the stern of the HMS Snark as it drifts through the somnambulant equatorial swamps … simian caterwaulings and jackanape antics of the crew providing the needful soothing jungle lullabies … a siesta beckons … perhaps a postprandial charpoy, memsahib?

These snores, that I wish to outgribe.
So clear,
Their mimsy incarnations, which fly through the brillig air
I drowse a tulgey sleep.
Did I love a Boojum?

A suivre …

Fit One, Page 8, Panel 1

Words, words, words! There's not going to be any of 'em in this drawing and besides, the Beaver seldom knows what to say anyway. They make such a buzzing in her head … so she's popped off, outside on deck, away from that galoot of a Butcher and his loquacious cronies in the main salon. She's having a breath of fresh sea air, watching the Boots and the Bellman gammon the ship's bowsprit, thinking of absolutely nothing in particular.

She is, as they say, a tabula rasa. Just the thing for an artist who's short on paper. A few quick strokes of the pen and voilà! In place of a quotidian Castor Canadensis, we now have a charming ingenue recently out of finishing school. She has imbibed all the social graces necessary for the sporting companion of any High Church Anglicans bent on Snarkicide. No more riparian galactophagogery for this lady, she's wearing the galligaskins now and she's loaded for Boojum!

In short — nurture triumphs over nature — again! Huzzah for the tabulae rasae of this world! Besides, no one likes a palimpset anyway, those snooty, nefandous know-it-alls.
________________

NB. Special thanks to Doug H., a true Snarkologist, for furnishing me with sample pages from Peter Bowler's The Superior Person's Little Book of Words. Address all excess-word complaints directly to Doug. I am but a humble bystander, so fight your own naumachia, eh?

Fit One, Pages Six and Seven as a Spread (What is Protosurrealism?)

What was Surrealism? An escape into perpetual dreams, perpetual revolution, perpetual reinvention, perpetual renewal through the device of the unconsciousness playing peek-a-boo with the artistic imagination, yes, yes, all the 20th century neuroses say look at me — the Surreal! The end result? The 21st-century post-postmodern artist manqué, addressing his fussy postcards from the hipster Present to the slaughterhouse of the Past. So much diffident worrying over the langorous finessing of … absolutely … nothing.

Protosurrealism says fiddle-dee-dee to all of the above. An artistic movement destined to occupy its proper alphabetized station between Postmodernism and Surrealism, but with far less formalities, Protosurrealism is imbued with the breezy style of the perpetual flaneur who is always "hello-I-must-be-going", an artistic movement which appears before Surrealism but happens after it.

In short, Protosurrealism is the 21st-century application of 19th-century answers to 20th-century problems!

Example: the double-page spread shown above. A classic example of 19th-century realistic pen & ink textual illustration, a style where nothing is left to the imagination because there is no imagination involved. The artist draws what he sees, nothing more, lest he be late for his tiffin.

And what does he see? He sees a 20th-century reader assuming that lexical and symbolic playfulness must really be confusion and alienation masquerading as nonsense — because the 20th-century reader always fears that everything is about himself! And even better, this reader begats a 21st-century reader who knows that everything is about himself.

What else does the Protosurrealist see? He sees a library full of universal histories of dreams to draw upon. The fact that they emanate from his past yet are always unexpected is the essential quality of being proto-anything, much less surrealism. And so, the Protosurrealist mollifies the neurotic tendencies of the 20th-century past with an academic performance of 19th-century draughtsmanship, delineating the cultural artifacts of Surrealism with the same precision as a bowl of flowers in a still-life. He then takes a quick peek at the calendar to ensure that this is the year 2007 and voilà!

Protosurrealism! Our future buries our past in a perpetual present!