C14| Saturday/Sunday, April 4 - 5, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
The Frabjous Delights
Of Seriously Silly Poetry
TODAY, WHEN PUBLIC LANGUAGE
can seem slippery or unreliable, we
might, for pleasure as well as reas-
surance, check in with the masters
of English poetry. They may some-
times use gibberish, gobbledygook
or balderdash for fun but, in the
end, they leave us delighted rather
than confused. Some kinds of non-
sense are consoling.
Consider Lewis Carroll’s “Jab-
berwocky.” For nearly 150 years, it
has provoked happy squeals in
children, and inspired serious anal-
yses in lit-crit scholars. The poem
comes from “Through the Looking-
Glass, and What Alice Found
There” (1871), the sequel to “Alice
in Wonderland” (1865). Its origin
goes further back. Stanza one ap-
peared, in 1855, in “Mischmasch,” a
periodical Carroll made for his
family:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy
toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
On its face, this may seem like
nonsense, and in fact Alice herself
has problems with it: “It’s very
pretty, but it’s rather hard to un-
derstand.” She’s wrong. It may dis-
tort sense, but it is not nonsense.
If you know English syntax and
parts of speech, you know immedi-
ately that “toves” and “wabe,” like
“borogroves” and “raths,” are
nouns, even if you have no idea
what else they are. “Gyre” and
“gimble” are verbs, “mimsy” and
“mome” adjectives. “Brillig” and
“outgrabe” are ambiguous. In po-
etry, all words are important, and
the odder they are, the more pro-
vocative.
Carroll’s creatures, like his
words, initially seem weird. But
they, too, have meanings or insinu-
BYWILLARDSPIEGELMAN ations, in context. Carroll tried to
help (or perhaps to confuse) his
reader. In the book, Humpty
Dumpty offers Alice some defini-
tions. He calls toves “something
like badgers” but adds they are
also like lizards, and like cork-
screws. Carroll’s notes in “Mischm-
asch” have it a bit differently: A
tove is “a species of Badger with
smooth white hair, long hind legs
and short horns like a stag” that
lives “chiefly on cheese.”
Subsequent commentators have
made their own interpretations. A
variorum edition of the work (such
as Martin Gardner’s “The Anno-
tated Alice”) resembles a scholarly
Bible or Talmud, with layers of
commentary heaped on prior com-
mentary, as one scholiast responds
to another.
Is there an original truth? Or is
the poem’s meaning the sum total
of all the possible interpretations?
Whom to believe? As Alice might
say, “curiouser and curiouser.”
Alice recognizes at least that
“somebody killed something”:
“Beware the Jabberwock, my
son!
The jaws that bite, the claws
that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and
shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
We are in the world of medieval
adventure narratives. Conflict is
imminent:
He took his vorpal sword in
hand;
Long time the manxome foe he
sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.And, as in uffish thought he
stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of
flame,
Came whiffling through theloves “Jabberwocky”: it turns read-
ers into etymologists. They can
make their own definitions.
John Tenniel’s famous illustra-
tion is itself a visual portmanteau.
It enhances Carroll’s vivid lan-
guage—which doesn’t really de-
scribe the beast—and gives the
poem a greater frisson. The Jab-
berwock is like one of those an-
cient mythical creatures composed
of heterogeneous parts. His neck is
a dragon’s; he has rabbit teeth and
bat wings. Oh, and he’s wearing a
waistcoat.
The poem ends by repeating its
opening stanza, returning to where
it began. It is a medieval ballad forVictorian times, its
stanzas rhyming a-b-
x-b, with the fourth
line of each one cur-
tailed, having three
stresses instead of
four. Carroll called his
original first quatrain
“Stanza of Anglo-
Saxon Poetry,” and
printed all of the
“the” words with a
variation of the Old
English letter “thorn.”
This is what we see in
signs advertising “Ye
Olde Tavern” and so
forth. Carroll wanted
his comedy to have
historical depth. Great
literary nonsense al-
ways has such depth.
The Brothers
Grimm and Shake-
speare were masters
of nonsense. Edward
Lear, Carroll’s Victo-
rian contemporary,
was likewise a genius
of serious frivolity
(think of “The Owl
and the Pussycat”).
Wallace Stevens
thought nothing of us-
ing nonsense syllables in his seri-
ous, sensuous poems. And there is
E.E. Cummings, every adolescent’s
favorite poet, who arranged sen-
tences in odd ways that first baffle
and then charm.
Loving a challenge, poets in doz-
ens of languages have tried their
hand at translating “Jabberwocky.”
The oddest of these are probably
in Esperanto and even American
Sign Language. As Robert Frost, al-
ways sly but seldom nonsensical,
said, “all the fun’s in how you say
a thing.”Mr. Spiegelman writes about books
and the arts for the Journal. CHRISTOPHER SERRAtulgey wood,
And burbled as it
came!
This is hero-
against-monster
(think: St. George
with his dragon, or
countless other he-
roes and villainous
beasts). Then comes
the easy climax:
One, two! One,
two! And through
and through
The vorpal blade
went snicker-snack!
He left it dead,
and with its head
He went galumph-
ing back.“And hast thou
slain the Jabber-
wock?
Come to my arms,
my beamish boy!
O frabjous day!
Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his
joy.
“Snicker-snack” is
delicious. And “Ga-
lumphing” and
“chortled,” words of Carroll’s own
invention, have entered our shared
vocabulary. We have inherited his
creations, the words as well as the
characters. They are no longer
strange but familiar, part of our
linguistic stock in trade.
In poems, sounds gather mean-
ing through suggestion. (This is
why rhyme is important.) “Wabe”
sounds like “wave,” and “Callooh!
Callay!” isn’t far from “Hip-Hip,
Hooray!” Some of the words are
original portmanteau coinages.
“Frabjous” combines “joyous” and
a hint of “fabulous.” “Mimsy,” ac-
cording to Humpty, is “flimsy” and
“miserable.” No wonder everyoneNonsense words and
gibberish revel in the
malleability of the
English language.Early children’s
books focused on
teaching morals and
manners, but modern
classics from Louisa
May Alcott’s ‘Little
Women’ (1868) to
Astrid Lindgren’s
‘Pippi Longstocking’
(1945) make children
the heroes of their
own adventures.
Illustrations became
a key part of books
for younger readers,
like Dr. Seuss’s
‘Green Eggs and
Ham’ (1960).EXHIBIT|ALEXANDRA WOLFE
Book covers reveal how children’s literature
has changed over time, from earnest instruction
to playful adventure.Magic for
Young Readers
REVIEW
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WALKER BOOKS; VIKING PRESS; ALAMY (2); PUFFIN BOOKS; ALAMY; ALMA BOOKSW
hen children’s
books first ap-
peared over two
centuries ago,
they weren’t filled
with fantasy or frivolity. In the 18th
century, people thought of children
as small adults, and they were told
stories meant to teach moral lessons
and good behavior. In time, however,
children’s literature became more in-
teractive, playful and warm. A new
book by Colin Salter, “100 Children’s
Books That Inspire Our World,”
which will be published by Rizzoli on
April 7, includes bright covers and
lively descriptions of beloved chil-
dren’s books from 1697 to 2011.
Starting with “Mother Goose”
(1697), a collection of French fairy
tales, the early books were edifying.
They taught children lessons such as
being kind to their relatives and
learning their ABCs. It wasn’t until
the 19th century that writers
such as Robert Louis Steven-
son and Mark Twain started
writing books geared to chil-
dren’s interests, with boys and
girls as the central characters.
By the early 20th century,
publishers started incorporat-
ing more pictures in books for
children, such as Beatrix Pot-
ter’s “The Tale of Peter Rab-
bit” (1901). Illustrations
started off as delicate and de-
tailed, says Mr. Salter, and
slowly became more cartoony,
as in A.A.Milne’s “Winnie the
Pooh” (1926).
In the last 40 years, chil-
dren’s books have increasingly
told tales of teenage angst, as
in the high-school soap-opera
series “Sweet Valley High,” which
ran to 181 volumes between 1983
and 2003. For younger kids, modern
books include more bells and whis-
tles, such as pop-ups, cut-outs and
push-buttons.
Today’s authors, says Mr. Salter,
credit children with the ability to
deal with dark, scary plotlines.
Books such as “A Monster Calls” by
Patrick Ness, a 2007 fantasy book
about a boy whose mother is dying,
include serious subject matter.
Throughout the ages, abandon-
ment and isolation are common
themes. “Authors are demons for
finding ways to isolate children,”
says Mr. Salter. “They force the child
in the story to muddle through on
his own to triumph.” That’s a happy
ending in itself: “It’s a great way to
entertain a child, to build a child’s
confidence to think it’s possible to
go on without your parents.”MASTERPIECE|‘JABBERWOCKY’ (1871), BY LEWIS CARROLL