INVISIBLE CITIES XIX -- Chapter 2, ..... 2

1. Considering what "an hourglass could mean," what are your thoughts on everything we've read to this point?  Has your interpretation changed?
2. Similarly, we've discussed a few times how getting to the root of an author's motives or the source of his creativity or his biography can assist the interpretation of a text, so here is Marco Polo an author.  Is it possible for his audience, Kublai Kahn, to get behind the stories?
3. How might Polo's stories, despite their general incomprehensibility yet provide a new avenue for Kublai to understand his own cities?
4. "The foreigner had learned to speak the emperor's language or the emperor to understand the language of the foreigner."  Is there a difference?
5. This exposition was an "aha" moment for me the first time I read it.  What is the great benefit of the charades over the "precise words"?  How do the verbal descriptions given by Calvino perhaps fit better the charades than whatever Polo may have actually spoken?

Alice in Wonderland XIII -- AGAINST ANALYSIS

Gilbert K. Chesterton, on the day of Carroll's 100th birthday:

"Poor, poor, little Alice!  She has not only been caught and made to do lessons; she has been forced to inflict lessons on others.  Alice is now not only a schoolgirl but a schoolmistress.  The holiday is over and Dodgson is again a don.  There will be lots and lots of examination papers, with questions like: (1) What do you know of the following; mimsy, gimble, haddocks' eyes, treacle-wells, beautiful soup?  (2) Record all the moves in the chess game in Through the Looking-Glass, and give diagram.  (3) Outline the practical policy of the White Knight for dealing with the social problem of green whiskers.  (4) Distinguish between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

On the other hand one Phyllis Greenacre (whom I reference periodically) has done a thorough, and generally considered the best, psychoanalysis of Carroll and his books via the collection of his works and going as far as to express, for example, a conviction of an otherwise common "reversal of the unresolved Oedipal attachment" in the author, rendering Alice the mother figure, rather than the kings or queens or Duchess as parents.  Martin Gardner expresses gratitude for her work, yet also the wish that "she were less sure of herself."

My point here is that these two extremes bring about a couple of questions (yes, there is some not insignificant self-consciousness here on my part, and yes, I have answers to the following questions that satisfy any potential personal guilt; do you, or is this an adequately impersonal endeavor such that it holds no weight?):

1. Is it wrong (and therefor, am I wrong) to analyze and explicate a basically-absurd fantasy?
2. If not, then how far is too far?
3. Why might it not be advisable to be so sure of oneself?

A final question I find I have to ask myself (and myself alone): Why is it so deeply important that I so thoroughly understand my personal motives for attempting--digging--to as thoroughly understand Alice and her Maker?  This whole thing bears a near-spiritual resonance within me, and I don't know why.

Alice in Wonderland V -- Absurdities in Interpreting Alice

Lewis Carroll, self portrait

From Martin Gardner's prefatory notes in his The Annotated Alice, the Definitive Edition:

There are two types of notes I have done my best to avoid, not because they are difficult to do or should not be done, but because they are so exceedingly easy to do that any clever reader can write them out for himself.  I refer to allegorical and psychoanalytic exegesis.  Like Homer, the Bible, and other great works of fantasy, the Alice books lend themselves readily to any type of symbolic interpretation--political, metaphysical, or Freudian.  Some learned commentaries of this sort are hilarious.  Shane Leslie, for instance, writing on "Lewis Carroll and the Oxford Movement" (in the London Mercury, July 1933), finds in Alice a secret history of the religious controversies of Victorian England.  The jar of orange marmalade, for example, is a symbol of Protestantism (William of Orange; get it?).  The battle of the White and Red Knights is the famous clash of Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.  The blue caterpillar is Benjamin Jowett, the White Queen is Cardinal John Henry Newman, the Red Queen is Cardinal Henry Manning, the Cheshire Cat is Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, and the Jabberwock "can only be a fearsome representation of the British view of the Papacy..."

Martin Gardner

In recent years the trend has naturally been toward psychoanalytic interpretations.  Alexander Woollcott once expressed relief that the Freudians had left Alice's dreams unexplored; but that was twenty years ago and now, alas, we are all amateur head-shrinkers.  We do not have to be told what it means to tumble down a rabbit hole or curl up inside a tiny house with one foot up the chimney.  The rub is that any work of nonsense abounds with so many inviting symbols that you can start with any assumption you please about the author and easily build up an impressive case for it.  Consider, for example, the scene in which Alice seizes the end of the White King's pencil and begins scribbling for him.  In five minutes one can invent six different interpretations.  Whether Carroll's unconscious had any of them in mind, however, is an altogether dubious matter.


Obviously the beggars the question, Is my current interpretive reading then even worth the time to write up and post or the bits and bites to store it?

Here's how I look at it: the "hilarious" commentaries mentioned above seem take no consideration (and I don't know how they could and yet be conscionably made at all) for the life and other writings/interests of Lewis Carroll.  I've already written at length (likely too much so) about my own and personal justifications for taking the particular bent that I am on the books, but I think I think I also need to be clear that I am only doing so with the utmost effort to ensure that anything I put out there at least fits within the possibilities proffered by the man's character.

SATELLITE versus LITERARY INSPECTION

My eyes and technical expertise are inadequate to determine if Google Earth's resolution across the planet is impartial.  Not so long ago, my hometown of Dover, Ohio seemed to have a much lower level of detail than did, say, cities like Venice, Chicago, and Sydney; and it makes sense: it's like pharmaceutical research.  Why would a company invest money to interest a mere twelve thousand people when they could put the exact same money to use and satisfy twelve million.  Apparently time has done what beta money could not, and my former fellow citizens have finally received the leviathan's attention.  As far as I can tell, Venice and Dover have--at least almost--equal resolution (though I doubt anything like a 3D tour will ever be available for anything labeled "small-town Midwest").

Dover, Ohio

Regardless of the catholicity of Google's eye--and regardless of how fair it now and finally is--it is not perfect.  There is not a place on the entire planet where a viewer can zoom in so close as to inspect the wear and tear of a child's swing set or count fish--or rats, for that matter--in the Grand Canal.  This isn't to say it's not possible; it just isn't the case currently as commercially available by Google.  I do expect, however, that it's only a matter of time before comparable giant like Home Depot manages to gain sufficient access to satellite imaging to target customers for roof replacement and foundation repair.  But no matter how fine the possible detail available through Google Earth or whatever else, never (dangerous word) will it be perfect ("perfect" used here as "complete").  Never will it examine the souls (or even the soles (haha! -- sorry)) of those who traverse these or any other locale.  Look too closely--zoom in too much (and why does the software even permit such closeups if there's nothing to be gained by them?), and all you see are increasingly large (or decreasingly small) squares of color.  Look too closely for information and detail is lost and interpretation is no more than feeble guess work.

Venice, Italy

So it is with literature.  I am Google Earth.  The text is the planet and its places.  My problem is one of self-awareness and an ever loosening grip on reality: I often forget that when I look too closely all I see is a blur of pixels--that I've gotten too close, and that this close, there's just nothing left to see.

So goes the old saying, which I believe has been used here before, at least in comment: "Can't see the forest for the trees," and this is my biggest difficulty--or fault--in my attempts to interpret James Joyce and his Dubliners.

The picture is so often so much prettier from a distance.