This came up on a Lewis Carroll forum that I take part in, and I thought it might be relevant here. Referring to Carroll's poem "The Hunting of the Snark", someone wrote:
quote:
In Fit the First, after it is revealed that the Butcher can only kill Beavers we are told:
Yet still ever after that sorrowful day, Whenever the Butcher was by, The Beaver kept looking the opposite way, And appeared unaccountably shy.
Yet in Fit the Fifth, after the Beaver's lesson we are told:
Such friends, as the Beaver and Butcher became, Have seldom if ever been known; In Winter or Summer, 'twas always the same - You could never meet either alone.
How are these two verses to be reconciled? If the Beaver changed his mind then why are we told "EVER after that sorrowful day..."?
Now to me there's no inherent contradiction, if you take the first occurrence of "ever" to mean "continuously", as in "an ever-present danger". In the 19th century this sense was probably more common than it is now. It doesn't necessarily imply that the enmity between the two was eternal or "for ever".
Do you get this reading of "ever", or is there a contradiction for you?
The first fit doesn't imply enmity between the Butcher and Beaver. The Beaver is simply worried because the Butcher has declared that he only kills beavers. For his part the Butcher never actually shows any inclination towards the act but the Beaver is understandably nervous.
In the fifth fit they become friends but it doesn't necessarily mean that the Beaver isn't still nervous. He could still look away from his friend, worried that his beaver-cidal tendencies might surface.
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Incidentally, I am something of an authority on Carroll and Alice. Which forum do you contribute to? I have been on a few in the past but not found one that I liked.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Originally posted by BobHale: The first fit doesn't imply enmity between the Butcher and Beaver. ... In the fifth fit they become friends but it doesn't necessarily mean that the Beaver isn't still nervous.
That's an interesting interpretation. I'm not sure if it's possible to genuinely become someone's friend and constant companion if you believe it's possible they're going to kill you, though.
quote:
Incidentally, I am something of an authority on Carroll and Alice. Which forum do you contribute to? I have been on a few in the past but not found one that I liked.
I see the Butcher as being spiritual kin to Frank Baum's Hungry Tiger who was always hungry because he wanted to eat fat babies but whose delicate conscience wouldn't allow him to satisfy the craving. Although he says he only kills beavers he goes through the whole eight fits without showing any inclination to actually do so.
It's always possible of course (he says deliberately over-analysing what is, after all, a nonsense poem) that when the Butcher admits that he only kills beavers what he is doing is denying that he is a butcher at all by claiming to kill only things that he does not believe can possibly be aboard. They had after all been "sailing a week" when he makes the declaration. He's probably shocked and embarrassed to discover that his excuse for not behaving in a more butcherly manner won't hold water as there IS a beaver aboard.
It's only natural that the Beaver should be worried, and to never be certain that he's safe, but he could become friends with the Butcher as time passes by with no sign of any actual harm.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Originally posted by BobHale: Although he says he only kills beavers he goes through the whole eight fits without showing any inclination to actually do so.
Well, he's not mentioned in the second or third fit, and the fifth fit is his "Damascene conversion", so it's only the fourth fit where he has an opportunity - that's the point where "the Beaver went simply galumphing about at seeing the Butcher so shy". I can only presume he was too shy to kill the Beaver as well.
Perhaps you might like to ponder the following question: if Snarks always carry bathing-machines around, why are they so difficult to hunt? And in particular, what happened to the bathing-machine at the spot where the Baker finally met his doom?
Originally posted by Proofreader: You're both trying to apply logic to a non-logical situation? A fantasy?
Don't forget that Lewis Carroll in his other life (as C.L. Dodgson) was a mathematician and logician, and that even his most bizarre nonsense works tend to have a strange underlying logic (e.g. the chess problem in Through the Looking-Glass). There's probably been more written trying to give some meaningful interpretation to the works of Carroll than to any other similar author. Even though Carroll himself is on record as answering, when asked what the Snark meant, "I don't know!"
Since many people here won't have read the whole of the Hunting of the Snark, I've prepared the following condensed version. In deference to this forum, it is of course in limerick form.
I very much doubt it! (Did limericks exist in Carroll's time?)
quote:
(But looking at the last few entries on your blog, you'd hardly be called prolific, would you? I rarely get through a day without posting something.)
It's not really a blog - it's just there in case I need to post something that can't easily be accommodated on a forum. I don't really like blogs and will nearly always use forums in preference.
Lear and Carroll were contemporaries so yes. But that wasn't my point. The verse form is irrelevant, your retelling in limerick form works very well and yes, I do think both Carroll and Lear would have liked it.
At any rate, I like it.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
