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Jabberwocky

steve_bank

Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky

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

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. Realizing 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.[1]

"Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English.[2][3] Its playful, whimsical language has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle".

Jabberwocky
BY LEWIS CARROLL
’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.
 
I knew someone once whose middle name was "Beamish," after the poem. Only she wasn't a boy, she was a girl, and very "beamish" indeed.

And I used to have the whole poem by heart. Probably still do, if I work at it.
 
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideasonly I don't exactly know what they are! "

I have a little term I sometimes use, Jabberwocky argument. Something that makes no real sense but is designed to fill your head with ideas. I see a lot of these in theological works. And of course politics.
 
The Jabberwocky is no more "nonsense" than Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein... OK, maybe Shel is not even close... but still. It's classic artistic expression with some deep use of onamonapia.
 
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideasonly I don't exactly know what they are! "

I have a little term I sometimes use, Jabberwocky argument. Something that makes no real sense but is designed to fill your head with ideas. I see a lot of these in theological works. And of course politics.

This quoted part of the poem speaks of the running of the baby turtles during the spawning full moon. Clear as brillig to me. :shrug:

In boring, modern English:

It was bright evening, and the slippery amphibians
floated and bobbed in the shallows
The newborn baby turtles were running erratically, but with purpose
and the seagulls were out hunting, with a great advantage.

It's not meant to be abstract... just because the language is difficult at first to comprehend. It's poetic... but does have specific meaning.
 
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