right|thumb|The Jabberwock, as illustrated by [[John Tenniel, 1871]]

"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by the English author and mathematician Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world.

In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verses on the pages are written in mirror writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems and reads the reflected verse of "Jabberwocky". She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape. Its playful, whimsical language has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle".

Origin and publication

thumb|right|upright|Alice entering the [[Looking-Glass world. Illustration by John Tenniel, 1871]]

A decade before the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll wrote the first stanza to what would become "Jabberwocky" while in Croft-on-Tees, where his parents resided. It was printed in 1855 in Mischmasch, a periodical he wrote and illustrated for the amusement of his family. The piece, titled "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry", reads:

The stanza is printed first in faux-mediaeval lettering as a "relic of ancient Poetry" (in which þ<sup>e</sup> is a form of the word the) and printed again "in modern characters".

The rest of the poem was written during Carroll's stay with relatives at Whitburn, near Sunderland. The story may have been partly inspired by the local Sunderland area legend of the Lambton Worm and the tale of the Sockburn Worm.

The concept of nonsense verse was not original to Carroll, who would have known of chapbooks such as The World Turned Upside Down and stories such as "The Grand Panjandrum". Nonsense existed in Shakespeare's work and was well-known in the Brothers Grimm's fairytales, some of which are called lying tales or lügenmärchen. Biographer Roger Lancelyn Green suggested that "Jabberwocky" was a parody of the German ballad "The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains", which had been translated into English by Carroll's cousin Menella Bute Smedley in 1846. Historian Sean B. Palmer suggests that Carroll was inspired by a section from Shakespeare's Hamlet, citing the lines: "The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead&nbsp;/ Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets" from Act&nbsp;I, Scene&nbsp;i.

<!-- He altered the spelling for Through the Looking Glass.

Lexicon

Many of the words in the poem are playful nonce words of Carroll's own invention, without intended explicit meaning. When Alice has finished reading the poem she gives her impressions:

This may reflect Carroll's intention for his readership; the poem is, after all, part of a dream. In later writings he discussed some of his lexicon, commenting that he did not know the specific meanings or sources of some of the words; the linguistic ambiguity and uncertainty throughout both the book and the poem may largely be the point.

In the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll wrote, "[Let] me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked me, how to pronounce 'slithy toves'. The 'i' in 'slithy' is long, as in 'writhe', and 'toves' is pronounced so as to rhyme with 'groves'. Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the 'o' in 'borrow'. I have heard people try to give it the sound of the 'o' in 'worry'. Such is Human Perversity." A "bander" was also an archaic word for a "leader", suggesting that a "bandersnatch" might be an animal that hunts the leader of a group.

  • Borogove: Following the poem, Humpty Dumpty says: borogove' is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, something like a live mop." In Mischmasch borogoves are described differently: "An extinct kind of Parrot. They had no wings, beaks turned up, and made their nests under sun-dials: lived on veal."
  • Chortled: "Combination of 'chuckle' and 'snort'." (OED)
  • Frabjous: Possibly a blend of "fair", "fabulous", and "joyous". Definition from Oxford English Dictionary, credited to Lewis Carroll.
  • Frumious: Combination of "fuming" and "furious". In the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark Carroll comments, "[T]ake the two words 'fuming' and 'furious'. Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards 'fuming', you will say 'fuming-furious'; if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards 'furious', you will say 'furious-fuming'; but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say 'frumious'."
  • Gimble: Humpty Dumpty comments that it means: "to make holes like a gimlet."
  • Gyre: "To 'gyre' is to go round and round like a gyroscope."
  • Jabberwock: When a class in the Girls' Latin School in Boston asked Carroll's permission to name their school magazine The Jabberwock, he replied: "The Anglo-Saxon word 'wocer' or 'wocor' signifies 'offspring' or 'fruit'. Taking 'jabber' in its ordinary acceptation of 'excited and voluble discussion', this would give the meaning of 'the result of much excited and voluble discussion'..." It is often depicted as a monster similar to a dragon. John Tenniel's illustration depicts it with a long serpentine neck, rabbit-like teeth, spidery talons, bat-like wings and, as a humorous touch, a waistcoat. In the 2010 film version of Alice in Wonderland it is shown with large back legs, small dinosaur-like front legs, and on the ground it uses its wings as front legs like a pterosaur, and it breathes out lightning flashes rather than flame.
  • Jubjub bird: "A desperate bird that lives in perpetual passion", according to the Butcher in Carroll's later poem The Hunting of the Snark.
  • Uffish: Carroll noted, "It seemed to suggest a state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish". It has appeared in dictionaries as meaning both 'deadly' and 'extremely sharp'.
  • Wabe: The characters in the poem suggest it means "The grass plot around a sundial", called a 'wa-be' because it "goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it". Linguist Peter Lucas believes the "nonsense" term is inaccurate. The poem relies on a distortion of sense rather than "non-sense", allowing the reader to infer meaning and therefore engage with narrative while lexical allusions swim under the surface of the poem.

Marnie Parsons describes the work as a "semiotic catastrophe", arguing that the words create a discernible narrative within the structure of the poem, though the reader cannot know what they symbolise. She argues that Humpty Dumpty tries, after the recitation, to "ground" the unruly multiplicities of meaning with definitions, but cannot succeed as both the book and the poem are playgrounds for the "carnivalised aspect of language". Parsons suggests that this is mirrored in the prosody of the poem: in the tussle between the tetrameter in the first three lines of each stanza and trimeter in the last lines, such that one undercuts the other and we are left off balance, like the poem's hero.

Translations

left|thumb|upright|[[John Tenniel's illustration for the poem]]

History

"Jabberwocky" has been translated into 65 languages. The translation might be difficult because the poem holds to English syntax and many of the principal words of the poem are invented. Translators have generally dealt with them by creating equivalent words of their own. Often these are similar in spelling or sound to Carroll's while respecting the morphology of the language they are being translated into. In Frank L. Warrin's French translation, "'Twas brillig" becomes "Il brilgue". In instances like this, both the original and the invented words echo actual words of Carroll's lexicon, but not necessarily ones with similar meanings. Translators have invented words which draw on root words with meanings similar to the English roots used by Carroll. Douglas Hofstadter noted in his essay "Translations of Jabberwocky", the word 'slithy', for example, echoes the English 'slimy', 'slither', 'slippery', 'lithe' and 'sly'. A French translation that uses 'lubricilleux' for 'slithy', evokes French words like 'lubrifier' (to lubricate) to give an impression of a meaning similar to that of Carroll's word. In his exploration of the translation challenge, Hofstadter asks "what if a word does exist, but it is very intellectual-sounding and Latinate ('lubricilleux'), rather than earthy and Anglo-Saxon ('slithy')? Perhaps 'huilasse' would be better than 'lubricilleux'? Or does the Latin origin of the word 'lubricilleux' not make itself felt to a speaker of French in the way that it would if it were an English word ('lubricilious', perhaps)? ".

In 1967, D.G. Orlovskaya wrote a popular Russian translation of "Jabberwocky" entitled "Barmaglot" ("Бармаглот"). She translated "Barmaglot" for "Jabberwock", "Brandashmyg" for "Bandersnatch" while "myumsiki" ("мюмзики") echoes "mimsy". Full translations of "Jabberwocky" into French and German can be found in The Annotated Alice along with a discussion of why some translation decisions were made. Chao Yuen Ren, a Chinese linguist, translated the poem into Chinese by inventing characters to imitate what Rob Gifford of National Public Radio refers to as the "slithy toves that gyred and gimbled in the wabe of Carroll's original". Satyajit Ray, a film-maker, translated the work into Bengali and concrete poet Augusto de Campos created a Brazilian Portuguese version. There is also an Arabic translation by Wael Al-Mahdi, and at least two into Croatian. Multiple translations into Latin were made within the first weeks of Carroll's original publication. In a 1964 article, M. L. West published two versions of the poem in Ancient Greek that exemplify the respective styles of the epic poets Homer and Nonnus.

Sample translations

Sources:

{| cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" border="1"

|- style="text-align:center; background:#efe9ef;"

|width=300px|Bulgarian<br />(Lazar Goldman & Stefan Gechev)

|width=300px|Danish 1<br />(Mogens Jermiin Nissen)<br />Jabberwocky

|width=300px|Danish 2<br />(Arne Herløv Petersen)<br />Kloppervok

|-

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:

:

:

:.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Et slidigt gravben vridrede

:i brumringen på tidvis plent,

:og lappingen var vaklig, og

:det borte grøfgrin grent.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:I glummert lys den slyge spæg

:stod gomrende og glim.

:I børkens dyb stod mamren fjæg

:og bungrede i skim.

|- style="text-align:center; background:#efe9ef;"

|Esperanto <br />(Marjorie Boulton)<br />La Ĵargonbesto

|Turkish <br />(Nihal Yeğinobalı)<br />Ejdercenkname

|Finnish 1<br />(Kirsi Kunnas & Eeva-Liisa Manner, 1974)<br />Pekoraali

|-

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Brilumis, kaj la ŝlirtaj melfoj

:en la iejo ĝiris, ŝraŭis;

:mizaris la maldikdudelfoj,

:forfuraj ratjoj vaŭis.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:akşamözdü, yavışkan burguleler

:döndeleyip cermelerken günsatba

:uyudüşmüş kalmışlardı karpüsler

:yemizler derseniz ak-ök begirba

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:On illanpaisto, ja silkavat saijat

:luopoissa pirkeinä myörien ponkii:

:surheisna kaikk' kirjuvat lorokaijat

:ja vossut lonkaloisistansa ulos vonkii.

|- style="text-align:center; background:#efe9ef;"

|Finnish 2<br />(Matti Rosvall, 1999)<br />Jabberwocky

|Finnish 3<br />(Alice Martin, 2010)<br />Monkerias

|French<br />(Frank L. Warrin)

|-

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Kyryissä mäiden myryt parvat

:ripoen kormivat pällyissään.

:Vilhujen borogrovien karvat

:talsoivat – ne niin sällyissään.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Jo koitti kuumon aika, ja viukkaat puhvenet

:päinillä harpitellen kieruloivat,

:haipeloina seisoksivat varakuhvenet,

:ja öksyt muvut kaikki hinkuroivat.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux

:Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave.

:Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux

:Et le mômerade horsgrave.

|- style="text-align:center; background:#efe9ef;"

|Georgian<br />(Giorgi Gokieli)<br />

|German<br />(Robert Scott)

|Hebrew 1<br />(Aharon Amir)<br />

|-

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:

:

:

:

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Es brillig war. Die schlichten Toven

:Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;

:Und aller-mümsige Burggoven

:Die mohmen Räth' ausgraben.

| dir=rtl style="vertical-align: top;"|

:,

:,

:,

:.

|- style="text-align:center; background:#efe9ef;"

|Hebrew 2<br />(Rina Litvin)<br />

|Icelandic<br />(Valdimar Briem)<br />Rausuvokkskviða

|Irish<br />(Nicholas Williams)<br />An Gheabairleog

|-

| dir=rtl style="vertical-align: top;"|

:

:

:

:

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Það leið að stekju, og slýgir greðlar

:sig snældu og böluðu um slöffruna,

:og angurvært sungu sópfiðrungar

:við sífgelt týðmana svíræna.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Briollaic a bhí ann; bhí na tóibhí sleo

:ag gírleáil 's ag gimleáil ar an taof.

:B'an-chuama go deo na borragóibh

:is bhí na rádaí miseacha ag braíomh.

|- style="text-align:center; background:#efe9ef;"

|Italian<br />(Adriana Crespi)<br />Il ciarlestrone

|Latin<br />(Hassard H. Dodgson)<br />Gaberbocchus

|Polish<br />(Janusz Korwin-Mikke)<br />Żabrołak

|-

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Era brillosto, e gli alacridi tossi

:succhiellavano scabbi nel pantúle:

:Méstili eran tutti i paparossi,

:e strombavan musando i tartarocchi.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et Slythia Tova

:Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo;

:Et Borogovorum mimzebant undique formae,

:Momiferique omnes exgrabuere Rathi.

|style="vertical-align: top;"|

:Błyszniało – szlisgich hopuch świr

:Tęczując w kałdach świtrzem wre,

:Mizgłupny był borolągw hyr,

:Chrząszczury wlizły młe.

|- style="text-align:center; background:#efe9ef;"

|Portuguese 1<br />(Augusto de Campos, 1980)<br />Jaguadarte

|Portuguese 2<br />(Oliveira Ribeiro Neto, 1984)<br />Algaravia

|Portuguese 3<br />(Ricardo Gouveia)<br />Blablassauro It has also been interpreted as a parody of contemporary Oxford scholarship and specifically the story of how Benjamin Jowett, the notoriously agnostic Professor of Greek at Oxford, and Master of Balliol, came to sign the Thirty-Nine Articles, as an Anglican statement of faith, to save his job. The transformation of audience perception from satire to seriousness was in a large part predicted by G. K. Chesterton, who wrote in 1932, "Poor, poor, little Alice! She has not only been caught and made to do lessons; she has been forced to inflict lessons on others."

It is often now cited as one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English, Other writers use the poem as a form, much like a sonnet, and create their own words for it as in "Strunklemiss" by Shay K. Azoulay or the poem "Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly" recited by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a 1979 book which contains numerous other references and homages to Carroll's work.

Some of the words that Carroll created, such as "chortled" and "galumphing", have entered the English language and are listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. The word "jabberwocky" itself has come to refer to nonsense language.

In American Sign Language, Eric Malzkuhn invented the sign for "chortled". It unintentionally caught on and became a part of American Sign Language's lexicon as well.

Media

A song called "Beware the Jabberwock" was written for Disney's 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland sung by Stan Freberg, but it was discarded, replaced with "'Twas Brillig", sung by the Cheshire Cat, that includes the first stanza of "Jabberwocky".

The Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park in Manhattan, New York City, has at its base, among other inscriptions, a line from "Jabberwocky".

The Jabberwocky was also the inspiration for the name of the American hip-hop dance crew Jabbawockeez, which was coined by member Joe Larot.

The British group Boeing Duveen and The Beautiful Soup released a single (1968) called "Jabberwock" based on the poem. Singer and songwriter Donovan put the poem to music on his album HMS Donovan (1971).

The poem was a source of inspiration for Jan Švankmajer's 1971 short film Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta (released as Jabberwocky in English) and Terry Gilliam's 1977 feature film Jabberwocky.

In 1972, the American composer Sam Pottle put the poem to music. The stage musical Jabberwocky (1973) by Andrew Kay, Malcolm Middleton and Peter Phillips, follows the basic plot of the poem.

Keyboardists Clive Nolan and Oliver Wakeman released a musical version Jabberwocky (1999) with the poem read in segments by Rick Wakeman. British contemporary lieder group Fall in Green set the poem to music for a single release (2021) on Cornutopia Music.

In 1975, the musical group Ambrosia included the text of Jabberwocky in the lyrics of "Mama Frog" (credited to musicians Puerta, North, Drummond, and Pack) on their debut album Ambrosia.

In 1980 The Muppet Show staged a full version of "Jabberwocky" for TV viewing, with the Jabberwock and other creatures played by Muppets closely based on Tenniel's original illustrations. According to Jaques and Giddens, it distinguished itself by stressing the humor and nonsense of the poem.

In 1981, the Jabberwock was published as a monster for Dungeons & Dragons in the magazine Dragon. It was later published in Monstrous Compendium in 1996 and in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight in 2021. Additionally, the Vorpal Sword is a magic sword capable of decapitating creatures struck by it in a single blow.

In 1985, the Jabberwocky appears in Irwin Allen's production of Alice in Wonderland as a monstrous dragon created from Alice's own fears, which she must overcome in order to return to the real world.

The Jabberwock appears in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), voiced by Christopher Lee, and is referred to as "The Jabberwocky". An abridged version of the poem is spoken by the Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp).

In 2016, the musical group Weezer included the text of "Jabberwocky" in the lyrics of "L.A. Girlz" which was included on their tenth studio album Weezer.

See also

  • Works based on Alice in Wonderland
  • Translations of Through the Looking-Glass

References

Footnotes

Sources

  • Carpenter, Humphrey (1985). Secret Gardens: The Golden Age of Children's Literature. Houghton Mifflin. Medievil 1998 sony playstation 1

Further reading

  • Alakay-Gut, Karen. "Carroll's Jabberwocky". Explicator, Fall 1987. Volume 46, issue 1.
  • Borchers, Melanie. "A Linguistic Analysis of Lewis Carroll's Poem 'Jabberwocky'". The Carrollian: The Lewis Carroll Journal. Autumn 2009, No. 24, pp.&nbsp;3–46. .
  • Dolitsky, Marlene (1984). Under the tumtum tree: from nonsense to sense, a study in nonautomatic comprehension. J. Benjamins Pub. Co. Amsterdam, Philadelphia
  • Gardner, Martin (1999). The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. New York: W .W. Norton and Company.
  • Green, Roger Lancelyn (1970). The Lewis Carroll Handbook, "Jabberwocky, and other parodies" : Dawson of Pall Mall, London
  • Lucas, Peter J. (1997). "Jabberwocky back to Old English: Nonsense, Anglo-Saxon and Oxford" in Language History and Linguistic Modelling. .
  • Richards, Fran. "The Poetic Structure of Jabberwocky". Jabberwocky: The Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society. 8:1 (1978/79):16–19.
  • Essay: "Translations of Jabberwocky" . Douglas R. Hofstadter, 1980 from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid , Vintage Books, New York
  • BBC Video (2 mins), "Jabberwocky" read by English actor Brian Blessed
  • read by English author Neil Gaiman
  • Poetry Foundation Biography of Lewis Carroll
  • The Lewis Carroll Journal published by The Lewis Carroll Society .
  • Sam Pottle