Jabberwocky by Lewis Caroll is considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language (Gardner 12). Originally it featured as a part of his novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Eleanor Graham admits this “strange nonsense poem printed in Looking-Glass characters, made more stir than anything else in the book.” (Graham 35)
There are different views on the origin of the poem. Graham claims that Lewis Caroll had created the verse years before the novel was published: “as a young man in his early twenties, when he had printed it in his private magazine, Misch-Masch, as “A Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry”. He printed them both in Anglo-Saxon and modern characters, with a glossary, ending with a literal translation of the passage into crude English.” (Graham 46)
The meanings in the glossary differed from those in the Through The Looking Glass, therefore, the translation read: “It was evening, and the smooth active badgers were scratching and boring holes in the hill-side, all unhappy were the parrots and the grave turtles squeaked out.” (Graham 53) Several years later the author made some changes in the poem while playing a verse-making game with his cousins near Sunderland (Graham 48). While comparing the two versions of the poem one can observe that the words differ in their spelling: bryllyg becomes brillig, and the like (Jabberwocky).
In the Times Literary Supplement (1957) Roger Lancelyn Green assumes that some part of the poem might have been inspired by an old German ballad called The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains (Green 12). In this poem, a young shepherd killed a monster–like Griffin. Caroll’s relative Menella Bute Smedley had translated this epic poem many years before the Through the Looking-Glass appeared.
Sean B. Palmer in his Origins of Jabberwocky finds some connection of the poem with two lines from the opening scene of Shakespearean Hamlet. He states that similarity is remarkable and demonstrates it in the following way:
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
—Hamlet; Act I, Scene I
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
—Jabberwocky; Stanza I (Palmer).
Coming back to Graham’s theory, she states that there is no reference in the novel to the Anglo-Saxon origin of the poem. The verse is presented as being in looking-glass language (Graham 49).
Others believe that it is a mistaken belief to treat the verse as one of Anglo-Saxon origin. Though Lewis’s original verse was called A Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, it was entirely the product of his creativity. It follows neither Anglo-Saxon poetry style nor syntax and grammar. The thing is that Caroll’s “Anglo-Saxon” characters were simply the letters of the modern English alphabet, just written in an unusual style that resembles much the Anglo-Saxon script. It is really doubtful that the author wanted to mislead the reader, the “Anglo-Saxon” script was intended to create fun or parody (Jabberwocky Variations). Actually, it is considered that Jabberwocky was meant by Carroll as a parody designed to show how not to write a poem (Green 67).
Anne Clark in her The Real Alice admits the inappropriateness of Caroll’s referring to his verse as to “Anglo-Saxon”, even while calling the verse “the most important of the poems” (Clark 78). She claims that Caroll was absolutely ignorant of the Anglo-Saxon language and poetic tradition: “he knew nothing of its basic vocabulary, its inflections, and word order; and he was apparently unfamiliar with the spring rhythm which Anglo-Saxon poets employed.” (Clark 90) According to her, the fact that the poem was rhymed which was not known in Old English does not matter, “enlightened scholars and general readers alike found their imaginations captured by the poem.” (Clark 110) Actually, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of the poem. It is even used in primary schools to teach students the use of nouns and verbs (Rundus 959).
One of the most striking things about the work under consideration is the language the author uses. Some of the words were merely invented by the author, others are portmanteaux. In Through The Looking Glass the character of Humpty Dumpty defines the nonsense words in the first stanza:
‘Brillig’ means four o’clock in the afternoon–the time when you begin broiling things for dinner… ‘toves’ are something like badgers–they’re something like lizards–and they’re something like corkscrews… To ‘gyre’ is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To ‘gimble’ is to make holes like a gimlet…mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’ (there’s another portmanteau for you). And a ‘borogove’ is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round-something like a live mop… ‘rath’ is a sort of green pig…‘outgribing’ is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you’ll hear it done, maybe–down in the wood yonder–and when you’ve once heard it, you’ll be quite content (Carol 23).
Some other words were explained in later Caroll’s works. The rest remained unclear. The Annotated Alice (1960) by Martin Gardner throws light on the poem in general and its vocabulary, in particular. There are some of Caroll’s writings where he explains how he formed some of his idiosyncratic words. One should take into account that the author himself did not know the meanings of the words he invented (Gardner 123).
The work influenced the development of the English language, as its vocabulary was enriched by the words from the poem (such as “chortled”, “galumphing”, “frabjous”, “vorpal”). Often, the very title of the poem comes to denote nonsense language.
One more peculiar feature of the poem is that although there is no “surface” meaning in it, the sound and syntax structure evokes certain ideas in any speaker of the English language (Cummings 39). Alice is the best proof of it, as after reading the poem she exclaimed: “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate–” (Caroll 45).
As far as this problem is concerned, Gardner’s work is extremely helpful here: the author suggests a thoroughly grounded analysis of Caroll’s allusions to persons and whatnot. Still, some of her observations might seem rather doubtful, for example, she writes: “A species of arctic duck that winters in northern Scotland are called the calloo after its evening call ‘Calloo! Calloo!’” (Gardner 197) But Cummings is inclined to think that this explanation is
the attempt of one in extremis. It should not go unchallenged, if only because it is doubtful that Carroll was conversant with the evening habits of the arctic duck. What seems more likely is that, as an educated Englishman of that time, he had studied Greek “in the days of his youth,” quite probably under a severe schoolmaster (Cummings 39).
Another point worth discussing here is the pronunciation of the words that Caroll invented. In the Preface to the novel, he wrote that realizing the differences of opinion as far as the pronunciation of new words is concerned he gave instructions on that point also. Then comes the author’s explanation of how this or that sound or cluster should be pronounced (Caroll 5). Special attention the author pays to the words “of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau” (Caroll 5).
As for the structure of the poem, it is perfectly consistent with classic English poetry, even though it contains a lot of absurd words. The sentence structure of the poem is accurate which makes it difficult to reproduce in other languages. Quatrain verse, rhymed, iambic meter are the most evident poetic forms in the verse. The poem can be considered as an example of a monomyth.
Thus, the origin of the work we have discussed above, its peculiar features, and its literary significance make it a real masterpiece in this genre. Those who will try to surpass Caroll in his success will face a lot of challenges as the work is unique in itself.
Works Cited
“Jabberwocky Variations.”. 2008. Web.
“Jabberwocky.” 1997. Web.
Caroll, Lewis. Through the Looking Glass. Penguin Popular Classic, 2006.
Clark, Anne. The Real Alice. London: Michael Joseph, 1984.
Cummings, Edward E. “16. Carroll’s Jabberwocky, 23.” Explicator 31.3 (1972): 39-41.
Gardner, Martin. The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999.
Graham, Eleanor. “Lewis Carroll and the Writing of Through The Looking Glass.” Introduction to Through The Looking Glass. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass. Puffin Books, 1981.
Green, Lancelyn. The Lewis Carroll Handbook. London: Dawson of Pall Mall, 1970.
Palmer, Sean B. “Origins of Jabberwocky”. Web.
Rundus, Raymond J. “”O Frabjous Day!”: Introducing Poetry.” The English Journal 56.7 (1967): 958-963.
Wallraff, Barbara. “Shouldn’t There Be a Word? The Holes in Our Language and the Never-Ending Search for Words to Fill Them.” American Scholar Spring 2006: 76.