acknowledged – The Hunting of the Snark

Surrealist Entanglements

This perhaps is the first reference in academia to my findings: Chapter 7 Surrealist Entanglements (excerpts which refer to my findings) in Marysa Demoor‘s book A Cross-Cultural History of Britain and Belgium, 1815-1918: Mudscapes and Artistic Entanglements, Springer Nature (Palgrave Macmillan), 2022-03-21.
(Review by Marnix Verplancke, translated by Kate Connelly.)

What Marysa Demoor’s wrote about Henry Holiday’s pictorial references in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark confirms what I wrote my article Nose is a Nose is a Nose in the LCNSA Knight Letter (№ 99, Fall 2017, p. 30~31). I found Holiday’s pictorial references to Gheeraerts’ Image Breakers in 2009. Actually, a reference from another Snark illustration by Henry Holiday to Gheeraerts’ print started my Snark hunt in December 2008 .

Henry Holiday’s references to Gheeraerts are also mentioned in Marysa Demoor’s article Een culturele brexit? Grotesk! (2022-05-07, archive) in the Belgian De Standaard.

Professor Demoor didn’t specify her sources for what she wrote about Henry Holiday’s references to Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, William Sidney Mount and Benjamin Duchenne.

Mastodon | Reddit | ex Twitter

2022-11-21, updated: 2024-02-27

My 1st Snark Trophy

My first Snark encounter was in 2005. Then, after almost four years, I entered the Snark hunting grounds in December 2008. http://www.artandpopularculture.com/User:Goetzkluge could give you an idea where I was in 2010.

The image shows illustrations by Henry Holiday (from The Hunting of the Snark, 1876) and Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (Allegory of Iconoclasts, aka The Image Breakers, around 1567): In the “mouth” of Gheeraerts’ “head” a praying priest is depicted. The shape of the priest also is visible in the “mouth” of Holiday’s vanishing “Baker”.

There is more — with acknowledgements to Mahendra Singh, to John Tufail and to the Internet.

And there are more big heads.

Articles in this blog about Henry Holiday’s illustration to the chapter The Vanishing.

2017-08-28, updated: 2023-11-03

I met the Snark in 2005

Before my Snark hunt started in December 2008, I mainly focused on Henry Holiday’s illustration to the 5th fit in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. Since 2005 (then as a member of a works council, where I specialized on mental workload issues in OHS) I used that illustration as a depiction of improvable workplace design. I also inserted the illustration into a German Wikipedia article in 2008. (It’s not there anymore as it perhaps was too funny for the German Wikipedia.) Probably from there it was copied into another Wikipedia article in 2012. That one again might have inspired a Forbes article about well-being in the workplace in 2013.

In 2008 I read Carroll and Holiday’s complete tragicomedy. Then I made an incidental discovery.

2019-04-13, update: 2023-08-21

Kitty

Retweeted by Musée Unterlinden (2017-12-27, 2022-06-20):

Another finding (bycatch from my Snark hunt):

2017-12-27, updated: 2022-06-20

One Month of Snark Hunting in 2009

On January 27^th, 2009, I presented some first results of my Snark hunt after one month of hunting. In some cases (e.g. page 2) I probably was wrong, even though Henry Holiday might have used shapes in his illustrations as a reference to shapes in two or more source illustrations.

(Pages 3~5 just showed low quality renderings of three of Holiday’s Snark illustrations. Later I used high resolution scans.)

“Thought to be based on Gheeraert’s iconoclasm image”

Message to the Public Domain Review (2019-10-10): You are using my comparison (from December 2008) without proper referencing. This was my first discovery of one of Henry Holiday’s allusions. This finding started my Snark hunt. I think that Public Domain Review should specify the source (my proposal).

(February 2021: Now there is a link “thought by some” in publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-hidden-faces-anthropomorphic-landscapes)

Image (2019-10-10) from https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-hidden-faces-anthropomorphic-landscapes#17-0:

Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder’s allegory of iconoclasm, ca.1566 — Source.

The next picture is an illustration by Henry Holiday for Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. The face hidden in the darkness of the trees is thought to be based on Geheert’s iconoclasm image above.

The tenth of Henry Holiday’s original illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, 1876 — Source.

By the way, it’s not “the 10th” of Henry Holiday’s original illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. Holiday contributed only nine (not ten) illustrations to The Hunting of the Snark and two illustrations for the book cover. The Ocean Chart probably had been made by a typesetter, not by Henry Holiday.

And there are various way’s to write Gheeraert’s name. 😉

For discussion: Twitter | Flickr 2009

2019-10-10, updated: 2021-02-18

Happy Holidays!

Let’s move on. 2021 is waiting for us.

Nose is a Nose is a Nose

A Snark article in the Knight Letter
(with lots of help from the editors Chris Morgan and Mark Burstein)

Source: Knight Letter (ISSN 0193-886X), Fall 2017, Number 99

When I wrote this article, I failed to mention that already in 1973 Elizabeth Sewell pointed out in The Field of Nonsense that a line in Carroll’s poem has a similarity to a line in a limerick by Edward Lear (MG058). I am sorry for not having mentioned that.

I posted my article online with permission of the Knight Letter editors. In the online copy, I fixed the wrong URL kl.snr.de. It’s kl.snrk.de. Furthermore, four additional images have been attached to my online version.

2009

2018-02-09, update: 2018-12-30: Reference to Elizabeth Sewell

2018-12-30, updated: 2022-08-01