.jpg) Cover of first edition | |
| Author | Lewis Carroll |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Henry Holiday |
| Cover artist | Henry Holiday |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Nonsense poetry |
| Publisher | Macmillan Publishers |
Publication date | 29 March 1876 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| OCLC | 2035667 |
| Text | The Hunting of the Snark atWikisource |
The Hunting of the Snark, subtitledAn Agony, in Eight Fits, is a poem by the English writerLewis Carroll. It is typically categorised as anonsense poem. Written between 1874 and 1876, it borrows the setting, some creatures, and eightportmanteau words from Carroll's earlier poem "Jabberwocky" in his children's novelThrough the Looking-Glass (1871).
Macmillan publishedThe Hunting of the Snark in the United Kingdom at the end of March 1876, with nine illustrations byHenry Holiday. It had mixed reviews from reviewers, who found it strange. The first printing of the poem consisted of 10,000 copies. There were two reprints by the conclusion of the year; in total, the poem was reprinted 17 times between 1876 and 1908. The poem also has been adapted for musicals, movies, opera, plays, and music.
The narrative follows a crew of ten trying to hunt the Snark, a creature which may turn out to be a highly dangerousBoojum. The only crew member to find the Snark quietly vanishes, leading the narrator to explain that the Snark was a Boojum after all.
Carroll dedicated the poem to youngGertrude Chataway, whom he met in the English seaside townSandown on theIsle of Wight in 1875. Included with many copies of the first edition of the poem was Carroll's religioustract,An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice".
Various meanings in the poem have been proposed, among themexistential angst, an allegory fortuberculosis, and a mockery of theTichborne case.
While Carroll denied knowing the meaning behind the poem,[1] he agreed in an 1897 reply to a reader's letter with an interpretation of the poem as anallegory for the pursuit of happiness.[2][3] Henry Holiday, the illustrator of the poem, considered the poem a "tragedy".[a]
The Hunting of the Snark shares its fictional setting with Lewis Carroll's earlier poem "Jabberwocky" published in his 1871 children's novelThrough the Looking-Glass.[5] Eight nonsense words from "Jabberwocky" appear inThe Hunting of the Snark:bandersnatch, beamish, frumious, galumphing,jubjub, mimsiest (which previously appeared asmimsy in "Jabberwocky"),outgrabe, anduffish.[6] In a letter to the mother of his young friendGertrude Chataway, Carroll described the domain of the Snark as "an island frequented by the jubjub and the bandersnatch – no doubt the very island where the jabberwock was slain."[7]
The crew consists of ten members, where all but one description of the members begin with the letter B:[8] aBellman, the leader; aBoots[b] (the only member of the crew without an illustration);[10] a maker ofBonnets and Hoods (the only description which does not begin with the letter B); aBarrister, who settles arguments among the crew; aBroker, who can appraise the goods of the crew; aBilliard-marker, who is greatly skilled; aBanker, who possesses all of the crew's money; aBeaver, who makes lace and has saved the crew from disaster several times; aBaker, who can only bakewedding cake, forgets his belongings and his name, but possesses courage; and aButcher, who can only kill beavers.[11]
After crossing the sea guided by the Bellman's map of the Ocean (a blank sheet of paper) the hunting party arrives in a strange land, and the Bellman tells them the five signs by which a snark[c] can be identified. The Bellman warns them that some snarks are highly dangerous boojums; on hearing this, the Baker faints. Once revived, the Baker recalls that his uncle warned him that if the Snark turns out to be a boojum, the hunter will "softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again".[15] The Baker confesses that this possibility terrifies him.
The hunt begins:
Along the way, the Butcher and Beaver, previously mutually wary, become fast friends after they hear the cry of ajubjub bird and the Butcher ends up giving the Beaver a lesson on maths and zoology. The Barrister, meanwhile, sleeps, and dreams of witnessing a court trial of a pig accused of deserting itssty, with a snark as its defence lawyer.
During the hunt, the Banker is attacked by abandersnatch, and loses his sanity after trying to bribe the creature.
The Baker rushes ahead of the party and calls out that he has found a snark, but when the others arrive, he has mysteriously disappeared.
They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark,
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.[18]
Two explanations of which event in Carroll's life gave rise toThe Hunting of the Snark have been offered. BiographerMorton N. Cohen connects the creation ofThe Hunting of the Snark with the illness of Carroll's cousin andgodson, the twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wilcox.[19] On 17 July 1874, Carroll travelled toGuildford, Surrey, to care for him for six weeks, while the young man struggled withtuberculosis.[20][21] The next day, while taking a walk in the morning after only a few hours of sleep, Carroll thought of the poem's final line: "For the Snarkwas a Boojum, you see."[22]
E. Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller suggest that the event that inspired the poem was the sudden death of Carroll's beloved uncle,Robert Wilfred Skeffington Lutwidge, caused by a patient in 1873 during Lutwidge's time as an inspector of lunatic asylums. They support their analysis with parts of the poem, such as the Baker's uncle's advice to seek the snark with "thimbles, forks, and soap", which, according to Torrey and Miller, were all items the lunatic asylum inspectors checked during their visits.[23]
Holiday and Carroll had some disagreements on the artwork. Carroll initially objected to Holiday'spersonification of hope and care, but agreed to the change, when Holiday explained that he had only intended to add another layer of meaning to the word "with".[24] However, Carroll refused his illustration of the boojum, preferring that the creature go without a depiction,[25] and made him change his initial portrayal of the Broker, as it could have been perceived asantisemitic.[10]
When finally published, the poem comprised 141 stanzas of four lines each,[26] withinternal rhymes in the first and third lines of irregular stanzas appearing in the poem from the second fit onwards.[27] Martin Gardner[28] annotated toThe Hunting of the Snark thatElizabeth Sewell pointed out inThe Field of Nonsense (1973) that a line in Carroll's poem has a similarity to a line in a limerick ("There was an old man of Port Grigor...") by Edward Lear.
To illustrate the poem Carroll choseHenry Holiday, whom he had met in 1869[24] or 1870.[29] At the time Carroll approached him to ask if he could create three illustrations for the poem, Carroll had completed three "fits", as he called the parts of his poem – fit can mean eithercanto or convulsion[30] – "The Landing", "The Hunting", and "The Vanishing".[29] He intended to title itThe Boojum and include it in his fantasy novelSylvie and Bruno, which was unfinished at the time.[29] However, in late October 1875, Carroll thought about having it published duringChristmas; this proved impossible, as the wood engraving for the illustrations needed three months to be complete.[31] By the time Holiday had completed the sketches and sent them to Carroll, Carroll had already created a new fit requiring an illustration. They worked this way until Holiday had created nine illustrations as well as the front cover and the back cover of the book.[24] Thus, among the ten illustrations shown below, one illustration is not by Holiday.[32] The "Ocean Chart" is typographic art whereaselectrotypes made fromJoseph Swain's woodblock engravings were used to print Holiday's illustrations.
There is no depiction of the Snark, nor of Boots. However, based on a draft[33] by Carroll, the snark was allowed to show up in an illustration by Holiday, where it appeared in a dream of the Barrister.
The illustration to the chapterThe Banker's Fate might contain pictorial allusions to the etchingThe Image Breakers byMarcus Gheeraerts the Elder,[34] toWilliam Sidney Mount's paintingThe Bone Player and to a photograph byBenjamin Duchenne used for a drawing inCharles Darwin's 1872 bookThe Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.[35]
Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task
Eager she wields her spade: yet loves as well
Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask
The tale he loves to tell.
Rude spirits of the seething outer strife,
Unmeet to read her pure and simple spright,
Deem, if you list, such hours a waste of life
Empty of all delight!
Chat on, sweet Maid, and rescue from annoy
Hearts that by wiser talk are unbeguiled.
Ah, happy he who owns that tenderest joy,
The heart-love of a child!
Away fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more!
Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days—
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit short
Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!
Upon the printing of the book on 29 March 1876, Carroll gave away eighty signed copies to his favourite young friends; in a typical fashion, he signed them with short poems, many of themacrostics of the child's name.[31] He dedicatedThe Hunting of the Snark toGertrude Chataway, whom he had befriended in summer 1875 at the English seaside townSandown on theIsle of Wight.[36] He finished the dedication a month after befriending her, a doubleacrostic poem that not only spelled out her name, but contained asyllable of her name in the first line of each stanza.[37] The stanza of his first draft concluded "Rest on a friendly knee, the tale to ask / That he delights to tell."[7] The poem was printed inThe Hunting of the Snark with permission from Chataway's mother.[7]
Included with many copies of the first edition ofThe Hunting of the Snark was Carroll's three-page, religioustract to his young readers,An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice".[38][39] Largely written on 5 February 1876,An Easter Greeting explores the concept of innocence andeternal life through biblicalallusions and literary allusions toRomantic writersWilliam Blake andWilliam Wordsworth.[19][38] Gardner suggests that Carroll included the tract as a way of balancing the dark tone of the poem.[38] Scholar Selwyn Goodacre speculates that, as many copies of first-edition of the poem contain the tract, there is a possibility that all first editions originally had a copy ofAn Easter Greeting.[40]
The first printing ofThe Hunting of the Snark consisted of 10,000 copies.[41] By the conclusion of 1876, it had seen two reprints, with a total of 18,000[42] or 19,000 copies circulating.[41] In total, the poem was reprinted seventeen times between 1876 and 1908.[42]
The Hunting of the Snark received largely mixed reviews from Carroll's contemporary reviewers.[21]The Academy'sAndrew Lang criticised Carroll's decision to use poetry instead of prose and its too appealing title.[21]The Athenaeum described it as "the most bewildering of modern poetry", wondering "if he has merely been inspired to reduce to idiotcy as many readers and more especially reviewers, as possible".[21] According toVanity Fair, Carroll's work had progressively worsened afterAlice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), withThe Hunting of the Snark being the worst of his works and "not worthy [of] the name of nonsense".[21] WhileThe Spectator wrote that the poem's final line had the potential to become aproverb, it criticised the poem as "a failure" that might have succeeded with more work from the author.[21]The Saturday Review wrote that the poem offered "endless speculation" as to the true identity of the Snark, although the unnamed reviewer felt that the familiar nature of Carroll's nonsense weakened its effect for the reader.[21] Conversely,The Graphic praised the poem as a welcome departure from theAlice books, and called it "a glorious piece of nonsense", that could appeal to allAlice fans.[21]
"The Hunting of the Snark" has in common some elements with Carroll's other works. It shares its author's love of puns on the word "fit" withAlice's Adventures in Wonderland,[43] and mentions of "candle-ends" and "toasted cheese" with his supernatural poemPhantasmagoria.[44] Additionally all three works include the number "42".[45] Another of Carroll's children's novels,Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) makes a reference to the Boojum.[46]
Other illustrators ofThe Hunting of the Snark includePeter Newell (1903), Edward A. Wilson (1932),Mervyn Peake (1941), Aldren Watson (1952),Tove Jansson (1959),Helen Oxenbury (1970), Byron Sewell (1974), John Minnion (1974),Harold Jones (1975),Ralph Steadman (1975),Quentin Blake (1976),Frank Hinder (1989), Brian Puttock (1997)[40] and Jeffrey Fisher (special edition Folio Society London 2010).
The Hunting of the Snark has seen various adaptations into musicals, opera, theatre, plays, and music,[40] including a piece for trombone by Norwegian composerArne Nordheim (1975)[48] a jazz rendition (2009),[49] and (in French translation – La chasse au Snark) with music byMichel Puig for five actresses, eight actors and an instrumental ensemble of five players, premiered at theFestival d'Avignon in 1971.[50] The poem was turned into a £2 million budgetWest End musicalThe Hunting of the Snark by Mike Batt. In 2023 a film was released by Simon Davison.[51][52]
The poem has inspired literature, such as Jack London'sThe Cruise of the Snark (1911),[40] thescience-fiction short story "Chaos, Coordinated" (1947) by John MacDougal,[53] (collective pseudonym ofJames Blish andRobert A. W. Lowndes)Elspeth Huxley'sWith Forks and Hope (1964)[54] and the title ofKate Wilhelm's novella "With Thimbles, with Forks and Hope."[55] American authorEdith Wharton (1862–1937) was fond of the poem as a child.[53] Australian brothers, composerMartin and librettistPeter Wesley-Smith based their 1986 opera/musical comedyBoojum! for theAdelaide Festival on theSnark andAlice's Adventures in Wonderland.[56]
Additionally, it has also been alluded to in
Various themes have been suggested by scholars. According to biographer Florence Becker Lennon, the poem's "motif of loss of name or identity" is typical of Carroll's work.[69] Richard Kelly writes that the poem contains a "theme of annihilation".[70]Martin Gardner writes that "the inadequacy of language, meaning, and symbol is a recurring theme inThe Hunting of the Snark".[71] Furthermore,Edward Guiliano feels that theSnark is within the nonsense tradition ofThomas Hood and, especially,W. S. Gilbert, the librettist of the famousGilbert and Sullivan team. According to him, a case can be made for a direct influence of Gilbert'sBab Ballads onThe Hunting of the Snark, based on the fact that Carroll was well-acquainted with the comic writing and the theatre of his age.[72]
Widely varying interpretations ofThe Hunting of the Snark have been suggested: an allegory for tuberculosis,[73] a mockery of theTichborne case, a satire of the controversies between religion and science, the repression of Carroll's sexuality, and a piece against vivisection, among others.[74] According to Cohen, the poem represents a "voyage of life", with the Baker's disappearance caused by his violation of the laws of nature, by hoping to unravel its mysteries.[75] Lennon seesThe Hunting of the Snark as "a tragedy of frustration and bafflement", comparable to British actorCharlie Chaplin's early comedies.[76]
According to Kelly,The Hunting of the Snark is "Carroll's comic rendition of his fears of disorder and chaos, with the comedy serving as a psychological defense against the devastating idea of personal annihilation."[77] Kelly writes that the Bellman's Rule of Three ("What I tell you three times is true") and starting each character's name with the letter B are "notable attempts to create a sense of order and meaning out of chaos".[8]
F. C. S. Schiller, writing under the pseudonym "Snarkophilus Snobbs", interprets the poem as an allegory of Man's attempt to understand "the Absolute", and the members of the crew as representing different cultural approaches to the problem.[78] His interpretation of the Sixth Fit, "The Barrister's Dream" is particularly notable: He reads the trial of the pig for deserting its sty as symbolizing the ethical debate about whethersuicide should be condemned as an immoral or culpable action. The pig who deserts its sty represents the suicidal person who abandons life. (Like the pig, he's guilty – but being dead, is not punishable.)
Martin Gardner sees the poem as dealing withexistential angst,[79] and states that the Baker may be Carroll's satire of himself, pointing to the fact that the Baker was named after a beloved uncle, as was Carroll, and that the two were around the same age at the time of the writing of the poem.[80] Alternatively, Larry Shaw of thefan magazineInside and Science Fiction Advertiser suggests that the Boots, being the Snark, actually murdered the Baker.[81][82]
Darien Graham-Smith suggests thatThe Hunting of the Snark stands for science (e.g. Charles Darwin's research), where the Boojum stands for religiously unsettling results of scientific research (e.g. Charles Darwin's findings).[83]
Also allusions to religious issues had been suggested, like the Baker's 42 boxes being an allusion toThomas Cranmer'sForty-Two Articles with a focus on the last article on eternal damnation,[84] and Holiday's illustration to the last chapter containing a pictorial allusion to Cranmer's burning.[85][86]
As for Henry Holiday's front cover illustration, it is suggested that it contains pictorial allusions to theDitchley Portrait (c. 1592, byMarcus Gheeraerts the Younger, location:National Portrait Gallery, London, UK) and to an allegorical English School painting ofQueen Elizabeth I at Old Age with an allegory of Death and Father Time (c. 1610, unknown artist, location:Corsham Court, Wiltshire, UK). The back cover illustration could be a pictorial allusion to that portrait of the aged Queen as well.[87]
A federal appeals court has slammed the reliability of U.S. government intelligence documents, saying just because officials keep repeating their assertions does not make them true.
Rhyme? And Reason public domain audiobook atLibriVox – collection in which the poem appearsThe Hunting of the Snark public domain audiobook atLibriVoxAn enquiry into the relationship between text and illustration inThe Hunting of the Snark– 36 pages. (see p. 29 for examples of the usage ofsimulacra)
