The pursuit: the crew “sought it with thimbles”
The allegory: Carroll “thought it with symbols”
03:16 UTC · Jun 28, 2020 · by Steve Venright
See also:
※ The Hunting of the Snark,
※ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
2020-06-28, update: 2021-09-22
blog
De Morgan’s Snark
The tweet below has a link to https://www.demorgan.org.uk/which-snark-came-first-the-tiles-or-the-poem/.
This week, we're celebrating De Morgan's tiles.
Our volunteer, Vanessa, has spent this week painstakingly researching the archives to prove which Snark came first, the De Morgan tile or the Lewis Carroll poem!
Find out on our bloghttps://t.co/MZxlUaQt2F pic.twitter.com/M4S4rR2C6u
— De Morgan Collection (@DeMorganF) September 1, 2020
Inspiration by Re-Interpretation
François Tusques — La Chasse Au Snark
※ La Chasse Au Snark (studio version, 1968, 15:53)
※ Sa Triste Histoire Il S’Offrit à Dire (live version, 1969, 15:49)
※ Car Le Jubjub Etait Un Boojum, Voyez-Vous (Happening At La Vieille Grille 1967-8/Biennale de Paris 1971, 16:54)
※ Survint Un Silence Suprême (live version, 1968, 20:12)
Cover illustration: Tove Jansson
Links: jazzmusicarchives | YouTube
The Snark’s Significance
Henry Holiday: The Snark’s Significance, 1898-01-29 (The Academy, p. 128)
It is possible that the author was half-consciously laying a trap, so readily did he take to the inventing of puzzles and things enigmatic; but to those whok new the man, or who have divined him correctly through his writings, the explanation is fairly simple.
Mr.Dodgson had a mathematical, a logical, and a philosophical mind; and when these qualities are united to a love of the grotesque, the resultant fancies are sure to have a quite peculiar charm, a charm so much the greater because its source is subtle and eludes all attempts to grasp it.
Attached to Holiday’s article there also is a letter from Carroll/Dodgson.
We are all of us weak at times
The Baker says:Carroll’s Honest Lie
Authors, who say that they “don’t not know” whether their book is satire, quite probably lie. Such honest lies are less boring that telling that they won’t tell. (That is a difference to presidents who lie openly because it shows that they have the power to do that.)
Of course “The Hunting of the Snark” contains satire. Dodgson wasn’t stupid. Satirists who explain their work would kill their work. E.g. in case of the “bathing machines“, “The Hunting of the Snark” took a reference to one of Carroll’s obvious satires.
2019-06-23, update: 2020-07-04
Boris Karloff reads “The Hunting of the Snark”
The Illuminated Snark
We have 
holiday in Bavaria today. For me that’s a good occasion to re-read John Tufail’s “Illuminated Snark” (2004).
http://contrariwise.info/articles/illuminatedsnark.pdf (archive)
2020-06-11
Snark Radio Play
Sadly, it’s not online anymore.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06sbrxh/clips (2020-01-02):
Tony Robinson narrates this fresh adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic masterpiece following a strange assortment of characters on their quest for an elusive beast.
Led by a bell-ringing Captain, this motley crew must brave terrifying danger in their chaotic pursuit of a creature known as Snark. Accompanied by specially composed music and songs, this surreal tale questions whether anything is really what it seems. …
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2015.
Streaming: 2020-01-02 – 2020-01-31
Credits:
– Narrator: Tony Robinson
– Bellman: Eric Potts
– Baker: Paul Barnhill
– Butcher: Everal A Walsh
– Barrister: Jonathan Keeble
– Snark (in the Barrister’s dream): Jonathan Keeble
– Beaver: Stephen Hoyle
– Music and songs (composer): Katie Chatburn
– Music (performers):
– Katie Chatburn
– Dorry Macaulay
– Kathryn Williams
– Stephen Cordiner
– Jasper Wilkinson
– Director: Charlotte Riches
– Author: Lewis Carroll
2020-01-02, update: 2020-05-15
Gags and Serious Stuff
This is worth a follow: a twitter account that offers astonishing insights into Henry Holliday’s illustrations for The Hunting of the Snark. Turns out there are dozens of visual gags in them, detectable only by the enlightened! https://t.co/UIpgTujDvs
— UofG Fantasy (@UofGFantasy) April 13, 2020
Thank you. Gags, yes. But also serious stuff. Henry Holiday thought «L.C. forgot that “the Snark” is a tragedy» (https://t.co/RaClCCPoij). I don't know whether Carroll knew about the hint (https://t.co/kV1kqhERrD) to Thomas Cranmer's burning in Holiday's illustration to fit#8. pic.twitter.com/sHOfL8y3oz
— Snark Sesquicentennial (@Snark150) April 13, 2020
jub jub jub jub jub jub jub jub jub …
Lorenzo and Isabella
Bycatch from my Snark hunt:
The, well, ambiguity of that “shadow”is known. Also there were some Freudian assumptions regarding what the salt could stand for. But so far I didn’t find any remarks on the impossibility of having a shadow being covered by white salt which isn’t covered by that shadow. To someone who learned physics that is a quite obvious question.
2017-12-17, update: 2020-04-11
Seven Coats
021 There was one who was famed for the number of things
022 He forgot when he entered the ship:
023 His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings,
024 And the clothes he had bought for the trip.
025 He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed,
026 With his name painted clearly on each:
027 But, since he omitted to mention the fact,
028 They were all left behind on the beach.
029 The loss of his clothes hardly mattered, because
030 He had seven coats on when he came,
031 With three pairs of boots–but the worst of it was,
032 He had wholly forgotten his name.
2018-06-13, update: 2020-03-20
Mindprinting the Snark
In the page related to this blog post, I quoted a large part of the article Henry Holiday’s Hunting of the Snark art has subconscious order (2019-10-17) by Edmond Furter, where he applies his Mindprint concept.
I don’t understand the Mindprint concept yet and I don’t know whether I agree to Further’s views, probably because I still didn’t dig into his writings. But I added some hyperlinks into the quoted article. They lead you to entries in my blog snrk.de to which Furter might have referred when he wrote his article. Those links weren’t in the original article.
Details are Important
When the Queen met the Boojum
This is the first page published in snrk.de, a blog which was set up in 2017. It’s mostly about Lewis Carroll‘s, Henry Holiday‘s and Joseph Swain‘s illustrations to The Hunting of the Snark.
In his Illuminated Snark, John Tufail assumed that the night sky in the front cover of The Hunting of the Snark could be a map. Together with my assumption that Henry Holiday drew inspiration from several paintings by Marcus Gheeraerts (I+II), John’s paper helped me to find the Ditchley Portrait. That again helped me to find the painting by an unknown artist depicting Elizabeth I at old age.
2017-08-28, update: 2020-02-27
Untangling the Knot
Untangling the Knot
An Analysis of Lewis Carroll’sThe Hunting of the Snark
by Sandra Mann, 2018
[…] The Hunting of the Snark is an allegory for the journey of life which Carroll crafted very carefully to include “difficulties” which he believed had come about because of human error. Life as a journey by boat had long been a favorite metaphor of Carroll’s. In this case the tale would not be of a sweet row on a placid river, but one of a voyage filled with fear and bewilderment and dread. And the moral, that despite our bewilderment, we would all be saved through God’s love and compassion in the end. […]
(Sandra Mann and Mary Hammond are pen names of Mary Hibbs.)
Failure?
https://bookbarnbbi.wordpress.com/2017/12/01/pick-of-the-darwin-room/:
[…] When [The Hunting of the Snark] was published in 1876 it was illustrated by Henry Holiday who, though a very talented artist, failed to capture the surreal nature of Carroll’s poem. The illustrations for this edition however, provided by Gormenghast author Mervyn Peake, are the perfect accompaniment. Peake’s drawings have an uneasy bubbling quality, blending with the silly and macabre feel of the words […]
Nothing against Mervyn Peake’s illustrations, but already this illustration (even without the yellow lines and dots which I added) might contain more elements of “surreal nature” than what you find in Mervyn Peake’s illustrations. I like those playful weeds (or animals?) in the lower left corner of Holiday’s illustration.
That’s not the only thing which that corner has to offer.
Another popular path (not) to understand The Hunting of the Snark has been stated more than three times: Some call Carroll’s poem “nonsense”. It isn’t.
Anyway, I don’t think that Holiday failed to convey to us graphically what Carroll meant. The price for his achievement perhaps was that Holiday’s illustrations are less eye pleasing than illustrations like Peake’s.
Holiday’s illustrations are as grotesque as Carroll’s poem.
2018-02-16, updated: 2020-02-01
