Poetry Sunday 8 September 2013

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Jabberwocky
BY LEWIS CARROLL  with comments by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

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 the tulgey wood,”
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Source: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)

Comments by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor
From Mr Carroll’s ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’, and an object lesson to aspiring writers. The poem tells of a great adventure, of a terrifying enemy, sought and found and soundly defeated. Of how the hero, carrying the enemy’s severed head, is welcomed back home by an almost incredulous parent, who declares it a ‘frabjous day’, a day of wonder, a day of joyful celebration.
The poem demonstrates just how tenuous a hold, how temporary a hold we have on any language at any time. Lewis Carroll takes our language and turns it, thumps it, shreds and pulps it. Then, without as much as a by-your-leave spreads the mashed up remains out  in front of us, where it easily, and amazingly, still makes perfect sense!
This is because we know, we anticipate, our imaginations explore miles ahead when we are swept up in a story. The story is everything, the storyteller everything and the emotion of it all, of how it grips us somehow makes the precise pedantry of words almost irrelevant.
 The mind’s creative capacity is seemingly infinite. If anything words here, the properly precise words, would, in my estimation have been quite incapable of suggesting the utter strangeness of ‘…the tulgey wood…’ or indeed, ‘…the frumious Bandersnatch…’ 
A first class bit of fun, not easily achieved and well worth studying for it’s beamish whiffles and chortles.